


Doubt Thou The Stars Are Fire

by Princip1914



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Medical, Alternate Universe - Professors, Angst with a Happy Ending, Aziraphale Loves Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale doubts, Aziraphale is a doctor, Basically just an excuse for a human AU, But needs a sign from God to figure it out, Crowley Loves Aziraphale (Good Omens), Crowley has faith, Crowley is a surgeon, Death Valley National Park, Eldritch Sex, F/M, Female Crowley (Good Omens), Gabriel straight up sucks, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), Jewish Crowley (Good Omens), Las Vegas, Louisiana, M/M, Praise Kink, Trans Aziraphale (Good Omens), Trans Male Character, Very mild d/s, a range of Efforts and genders, but I swear they are all accurate to the story, or twenty human AUs mashed together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-14
Updated: 2019-12-16
Packaged: 2020-08-23 18:04:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 31,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20247046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Princip1914/pseuds/Princip1914
Summary: “Oh God,” Aziraphale said to the empty bookshop, pouring himself another drink, “Oh, Lord, tell me, if we had been humans together, with short lifespans and squishy bits and all that.” Aziraphale interrupted himself by hiccupping. “Would we have fallen in love? Are you listening lord? If you hear me, give me a sign, please, I beg you.”Unfortunately, or fortunately--one can never really say in such ineffable circumstances--the almighty was, indeed, listening.





	1. Prologue - After the End of the World

**Author's Note:**

> [Not](https://fleurmach.com/2016/07/10/mary-oliver-not-anyone-who-says/) anyone who says, “I’m going to be  
careful and smart in matters of love,”  
who says, “I’m going to choose slowly,”  
but only those lovers who didn’t choose at all  
but were, as it were, chosen  
by something invisible and powerful and uncontrollable  
and beautiful and possibly even  
unsuitable —

Crowley wanted to say something. Aziraphale could see it brewing behind his brow, could almost hear the words, not spoken but hanging there all the same in the time between the end of dinner and the presentation of the desert menu on countless evenings together, in the space between Aziraphale’s left pinky and the back of Crowley’s hand as they strolled, languid, in the park. 

This state of unsaid things, was, of course, not new. Crowley had been fervently not saying something for at least a thousand years, although Aziraphale had only become particularly attuned to this deliberate silence a century or so ago. But, as August stretched into September and the world continued to turn, Apocalypse averted, it was becoming harder and harder to ignore. Worst of all, Aziraphale thought, was the fact that, should Crowley finally say the thing he hadn’t been saying, if Crowley were, for instance to turn to him after dinner in this beautiful twilight, under the yellow glow of string lights on the restaurant patio, to press his hand and say, “Angel, I--” Aziraphale might actually be in danger of saying it back. Aziraphale’s fingers itched to cup Crowley’s cheeks, to stroke across his narrow lips. He thought how he might whisper, “my dear,” not in the casual, dismissive way Aziraphale addressed unfortunately inevitable customers at his shop (“my dear, put that down, it’s a first edition!”) but rather in a way so private, so tender, that Crowley would have to know was just for him. Aziraphale would lean in and---

And it was here that these fantasies, troublesome before the apocalypse, but positively ruinous now, always ended. 

“Angel, you’re staring,” Crowley murmured at him. Crowley was staring right back and not trying to hide it, cheek pillowed on his hand, casually leaning over the table, sunglasses askew. He pushed his desert away from him and towards Aziraphale. 

“Thank you, my dear,” Aziraphale said, accepting the desert. He couldn’t stop looking at Crowley’s lips. Crowley’s smirk said that he knew. 

Crowley drove him back to the bookshop after dinner. “I’ll walk you in,” he offered as the Bentley pulled up to the door and, human heart hammering, Aziraphale permitted it. Crowley’s hand was warm in the small of his back as Aziraphale fumbled with the lock (“keys, how quaint! you know you can just miracle it open!” Crowley had said the first time he witnessed this little ritual). Crowley said nothing now, just moved his hand minutely in such a way that Aziraphale felt each one of his fingertips like a brand even through three layers of nineteenth century fashion. “There we go,” Aziraphale said, breathless somehow, flustered, door unlocked, entrance to the shop gaping behind him. He turned to face Crowley, which somehow made it all worse, because now Crowley’s whole arm was curled around him. Crowley’s face was very, very close to Aziraphale’s. Aziraphale could see the warmth in his yellow eyes even through the sunglasses, even at twilight. 

“Angel,” Crowley whispered, and Aziraphale felt the puff of breath on his own lips. “Angel, invite me inside.” 

“I…” Aziraphale said, glancing up at Crowley’s eyes, then down again at his lips, which were so very close. “you know I can’t.”

“Can’t you?” Crowley asked. His tone was mild, but there was something raw underneath it, trembling. 

“I...what you think you feel,” Aziraphale said, trying to choose his words carefully, “anything I might think I feel. How do you know it’s real? I mean...this could destroy us both, Crowley, and for what?”

Immediately the arm around him was gone. Aziraphale shivered at the loss. Crowley gaped at him, now a safer distance away. “For what!? For what? Wait. Let me just.” Crowley pinched the bridge of his narrow nose, flapped an outraged hand at Aziraphale. “I’m just trying to process that between the two of us, you, an actual angel are the one asking me, a demon who isn’t even supposed to feel Lo--” 

“Yes, but--” Aziraphale tried. 

“But what, Angel, tell me.” Crowley sighed. “Slow I can handle, I can go slow, but this--” he waves a hand between them and then says, something desperate and brittle in his voice, “you cannot doubt how I feel.” 

“But Crowley,” Aziraphale said miserable. “Think about it. We’ve both been on this earth for thousands of years, it could just be proximity. I mean, we’ve only had each other--”

“Exactly,” Crowley broke in, “all we’ve got is each other. And I don’t want anyone else. And I know you don’t either.”

“No, I mean,” Aziraphale said over him. “I mean that it could have been any angel. You could be stationed on Earth with any angel for six thousand years and you’ll start to think you feel something. It’s not really about me at all. And I won’t have either of us doing something foolish and risky just because we’ve been around forever, and we’ve mistake a casual familiarity for…”

“For what, Angel,” Crowley asked. “Would it discorporate you to say it?”

“I shouldn’t,” Aziraphale said wretchedly. “It would be counter-productive.” 

“Angel, I love you,” Crowley whispered. 

“No, you think you do,” Aziraphale said back. “You’re just used to me is all.” 

Crowley swallowed. “It’s far more than that and you know it. So, what if I’ve known you a long time.” Crowley’s voice was pleading now. “I’ve loved you for almost as long as I’ve known you. There’s nothing I’ve ever been more sure of.” 

“But how,” Aziraphale gasped, agonized and close to tears. “How can you be sure. Crowley, dear, you got thrown out of heaven for doubting everything. How can you be sure about this?” 

Crowley regarded him for what felt like an age in silence. “I just am, Aziraphale,” he said quietly. “I just am, and I can’t explain it to you.” Crowley straightened the lapels on his jacket and pushed his sunglasses further up his nose. “Call me if you figure it out,” he said, and got back in the Bentley. 

“Crowley,” Aziraphale said after him, but he had already driven away in a squeal of tires. Aziraphale stood on the pavement outside his shop, the door open beside him, for a long time, feeling mostly wretched and a bit like a fool. He went inside and turned on all the lights and tried to remember the warm feeling in his chest from dinner, but then he remembered the way Crowley’s arm had curled around him at the door and how lovely it had been and how it might never happen again and how it ought not to happen again and he felt even more wretched. He tried to read, but either he had been lovesick for the past month or the bookshop itself had a cruel sense of humor because every book he picked up turned out to be a romance. Then again, he thought, tossing aside Pride and Prejudice, there were very few works of human literature that weren’t, in some way, romances. Humans were obsessed with romance, love, fucking. Sometimes he felt like it was all they cared about. 

But that, precisely, was the problem. If he and Crowley had been human, he would know for sure. Then each of them would have had billions of other people to pick from, wouldn’t they? It wouldn’t just be two lonely souls (metaphorically speaking of course, given that Crowley technically, no longer had a soul) alone on an island like the actor in that awful movie Crowley kept trying to make him watch, falling in love with a volleyball. 

Aziraphale hadn’t really prayed to God since the almost apocalypse, but he was wallowing properly now, and was also several tumblers of single malt scotch past sober and it seemed the thing to do. “Oh God,” Aziraphale said to the empty bookshop, pouring himself another drink, “This is the Principality Aziraphale, one time angel of the Eastern Gate, but now...well, not really sure anymore …” he trailed off, then with a rush of boldness, forged ahead. “Oh God, how do I know that I’m more than just Crowley’s volleyball? It makes me miserable to hurt him, but how do I know that I really love him? How do I know that he really loves me? I can’t let him endanger himself for something he doesn’t actually feel. Oh, Lord, tell me, if we had been humans together, with short lifespans and squishy bits and all that.” Aziraphale interrupted himself by hiccupping. “Would we have fallen in love? Are you listening lord? If you hear me, give me a sign, please, I beg you.” 

Unfortunately, or fortunately--one can never really say in such ineffable circumstances--the almighty was, indeed, listening.


	2. Gulf Coast Medical Center

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter and the next three chapters feature a trans male character who is concerned about being outed as trans.

Aziraphale woke with his cheek pressed to the window of the bus, a small puddle of drool collecting on the satchel on his lap. “Your stop,” the driver said to him, and opened the doors onto a sweltering July afternoon. Standing in the parking lot, Aziraphale almost despaired. The hospital was even smaller than he was expecting. It was absolutely tiny, barely worthy of the designation “Trauma Center” spelled out in flickering neon letters over the ambulance bay of the three bed ER. It was very, very rural. Nothing but bayou and Spanish moss on the way here. When the bus driver stopped for gas thirty miles out of town and Aziraphale went inside to use the bathroom, the hairs on the back of his neck had stood on end. Far from the ivory tower indeed. But wasn’t that what he had wanted when he chose family medicine? Getting close to the community, meeting people where they were at? 

The badge Gabriel had given him back in New Orleans worked on the first try. Inside it was cool and dark. Upstairs, in the room that doubled as an on-call room and a doctors’ lounge, there was already someone typing away furiously on one of two outdated computers. Long red hair cascaded over thin shoulders clad in blue scrubs. “Ah,” Aziraphale coughed nervously. “Surgeon’s lounge is down the hall I think.”

“Computer’s broken in that one,” the woman said without turning around. 

“Oh,” Aziraphale said, then put his bag down. “Sorry, you are?” he trailed off. The woman stopped typing and swiveled around in her chair. Her face was angular, made even more so by the perfectly applied makeup that accentuated all her edges. The badge clipped to the front pocket of her scrubs was in bold State University colors. 

“Crowley,” she said and held out her hand, giving Aziraphale’s a firm shake. “General surgery.” 

“Aziraphale,” Aziraphale said. “Medicine. Family medicine actually.” 

Crowley looked him up and down speculatively. “Nice to have someone else here,” she said. “My rotation just started two days ago and I’m already so bored. How long are you here for?” 

“Six weeks”

“Yeah, me too.” Crowley leaned back in her chair and Aziraphale’s eye was drawn down to the hem of her scrubs and he almost laughed. She was wearing black cowboy boots with snakeskin crosses stitched into the toes. Crowley looked like she noticed him looking. Her mouth crinkled up at the corner. “So, family medicine,” she said, drawing the word “family” out on her tongue. “This must really be your kind of thing then,” she said, gesturing around at the sweating walls of the hospital. “Going to the people and all that.” 

“I suppose it must be,” Aziraphale said, fingering his own badge nervously. Crowley’s eye was drawn to it. 

“Ah, you’re from the private hospital then.” 

“Yes. I am.” Aziraphale looked away. Gabriel had warned him, of course, that there was going to be someone from State University here, there always was. It was just how Gulf Coast Regional had been staffed for years, medicine residents from Louisiana Medical College, surgery residents from State University. “You have to do the rotation with them,” Gabriel had told him grimacing, “but you don’t have to like them. You definitely don’t have to spend any time with them. With any luck, you’ll never even see each other.” But here was the State University surgeon, apparently having taken up residence in Aziraphale’s own lounge. 

Crowley seemed to guess what he was thinking. “Oh, come on,” she said, “this rivalry thing is all bullshit anyway.” 

“They did tell me to avoid you,” Aziraphale said reproachfully. 

“Well, I’m not the devil!” Crowley exclaimed. “And I certainly don’t care about university politics. Look, it’s just the two of us out here,” she said. “Middle of nowhere. No one’s going to check up. One of the reasons I’ve been looking forward to this rotation, to be honest.” 

“Well,” Aziraphale said, pretending as if he hadn’t heard her. “You’ll have your patients and I’ll have mine. We hardly have to interact at all.” 

****  
Of course, this turned out not to be true in the slightest. Just half an hour later, Aziraphale met his first patient, a middle aged man, clutching his abdomen and moaning in pain on the gurney in the tiny emergency room. Aziraphale sighed as soon as the ultrasound swam into view and sighed again when the man’s total bilirubin came back sky high. Resigned, he punched the number labeled “surgery pager” into the black hallway phone. Crowley called him back right away. “Can you take out a gallbladder tonight?” Aziraphale said in lieu of greeting. 

“Oh,” Crowley said back, with an easy familiarity that should have grated given that they had just met that afternoon, but somehow didn’t. “I thought you would never ask.” 

****  
If it had only been patient care, it would have been one thing. But Crowley kept popping up everywhere else too. They both were staying blocks away from the hospital and Aziraphale would see her everywhere. She was at the one coffee shop in town waiting in line whenever he wanted to get coffee. She was drinking at the bar when he went to the one restaurant in town to pick up take away dinner. She was even sitting on a bench in the town green the one day Aziraphale thought it might be nice to take his lunch outside. 

It was hot and humid as always, and he turned around to go back into the cool of the hospital, but Crowley had seen him already and waved him over. She wasn’t wearing scrubs today, instead she was in a linen collared shirt, unbuttoned one button past what Aziraphale felt was decent and dark, tailored pants with those same snakeskin boots. Her eyes were hidden behind an incredibly stylish pair of dark glasses. She patted the bench next to her, and helpless, Aziraphale sat down. A book was lying open on the bench next to her. 

“Faulkner?” he said. 

“Oh, I don’t read.” She closed it hastily. 

“Ah, that’s someone else’s copy of “The Sound and the Fury” then?”

“Well, I certainly wouldn’t read anything so pretentious,” Crowley hissed. “Not even if I were plumbing the very depths of English literature in an attempt to understand what makes small town Southern life so attractive.” 

“I thought you were looking forward to this rotation?” Aziraphale asked mildly. 

“Oh, it’s still nice to be away from all that institutional bullshit back home,” she said. “It just would be nicer if it weren’t so boring. Not many people to talk to around here.” Even with her dark glasses on, Aziraphale could tell she was giving him A Look. He squirmed.

The thing was, Crowley was right. It was different out here. In the city, you had to try to find space for yourself, but now that Aziraphale had all the space he could want, he found it a little isolating. In the week and a half he had been here, he had become friendly with nearly everyone in town, but it wasn’t the same as having friends. There was a gulf, he found. People liked him, but in a reserved way, the same way they were proud of the fine architecture of the courthouse. “It was built in 1880 you know,” he had overheard one of the town’s residents telling an outsider from Baton Rouge in the grocery store the other day. It was the same tone people here had when they said things to relatives on the phone like, “guess what Gertrude, we have a doctor all the way from Louisiana Medical College in New Orleans here, right here, can you believe it?” They liked the town doctor, who, for six weeks at least, just happened to be Aziraphale. 

“You ought to try to make friends with your neighbors,” Aziraphale said after a moment, instead of voicing any of these thoughts. “Go to church, that’s how I’ve been meeting people.” 

Crowley snorted. “I don’t go to church” she said, with enough venom in her voice that Aziraphale made a mental note to back off that subject for good. “Besides,” Crowley continued. “You’re my neighbor.” 

“Well,” Aziraphale found himself saying. “I suppose a coffee once in a while couldn’t hurt.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> While the two hospital systems I've mentioned here are fictional, there absolutely are crazy rivalries between various hospitals that trickle down to students and staff working for different institutions.
> 
> In rural America, hospitals are often partially staffed by students physicians (i.e. residents) rotating in for a few weeks to months from training programs in larger cities. Family medicine is a specialty where you are trained in obstetrics/gynecology, pediatrics, and adult medicine. Family medicine programs are frequently focused on teaching people to provide primary care in very rural settings where there aren't a lot of options for referral. 
> 
> It would be crazy to allow a surgery resident (i.e. still a doctor in training) to do even a simple surgery like a gall bladder removal by themselves with no backup even in a very rural hospital, but please suspend your disbelief for the sake of The Drama (tm).


	3. Incision to Closure

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: non graphic description of CPR and of childbirth

Three weeks in, by the time he and Crowley were on nights together, they had developed something of a friendship. One coffee had turned into dinner, which turned into drinks, which started happening on a consistent basis. Worst of all, Aziraphale was beginning to suspect that it wasn’t only a friendship of convenience. If he had met Crowley back in New Orleans, he was sure they would have gotten along there, too. In fact, if he had met Crowley back in New Orleans he might have--

But Aziraphale cut that thought off before it could properly begin. Even if he did feel a frission of interest from Crowley, an interest so improbable that Aziraphale had nearly convinced himself he was making it up, it would never work in a town like this. Aziraphale only dated via apps back home and he made certain things about himself very clear from the start. He believed in directness, but there were things he couldn’t tell Crowley. He couldn’t risk the one friend he had out here in the middle of nowhere, worse, he couldn’t risk her telling anyone else. And he was sure a woman like Crowley with her fashionable hair and outlandish boots wouldn’t be interested in….well, she just wouldn’t be interested. 

Crowley was in the emergency room tonight, Aziraphale was upstairs in what passed for an ICU. Crowley had been on since noon, but Aziraphale came in fresh from sleep at 6pm. When he arrived, Crowley was waiting for him in the ICU, which was unusual. 

“Aren’t you meant to be downstairs?” he asked. 

“Yep,” she said, pressing a warm cup of coffee into his hands. 

“Oh, my dear,” he said, touched. “You didn’t have to.” 

“It’s just hospital coffee,” she waved her hand dismissively. “And listen, you’ll need it. Bed nine over there” she pointed with one long finger, “is going to try to die on us tonight.” 

“Crowley,” Aziraphale admonished. “That’s a person you’re talking about!” 

“Fine,” Crowley rolled her eyes. “The person in bed nine, who I admitted from the ED this afternoon, is going to try to die tonight. Watch out.” 

Aziraphale logged into the computer and clicked into the chart. He hated to admit it, but Crowley was right, it didn’t look good. 

“I should try to get an ambulance to take him to the bigger hospital down I-10,” he muttered to himself, already picking up the phone. Crowley covered his hand with her own slender one. 

“Don’t bother, I already called them five times,” she said, and Aziraphale heard the words, he did, but they came to him slowly, through the static that was her warm hand covering his. Crowley moved her hand and Aziraphale almost sighed. Crowley shot him a peculiar look. “Focus!” She snapped her fingers in front of his face. “Ambulance won’t take him because he’s too sick, chopper won’t take him because he’s not sick enough. We’re on our own here.” 

“Right,” Aziraphale said, swallowing. 

“I give him until,” Crowley made a show of checking her watch. “2am. And guess who has the code pager tonight.” Crowley tapped one long finger against the pager clipped to the V of her scrubs top. “All you have to do is press the button, and your problems become my problems once more.” 

“Well,” Aziraphale said, eyes drawn inadvertently to Crowley’s pager and down further to where the narrow swell of her chest disappeared beneath her scrubs top. “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.” 

At 1:59am exactly, the patient in bed 9 tried to die. Aziraphale hadn’t even bothered to try to sleep. After checking on all his other patients, he had hovered outside room 9, eyes on the monitor, watching the QRS complexes tick by, the slow rise and fall of the patient’s chest. Aziraphale turned away for a minute and when he turned back all the alarms were going off. He was on the chest even before the night nurses ran in, jabbing the blue code button with one finger before putting all his weight into CPR. Crowley came in soon after pulling the crash cart behind her and they stood across the bed from each other on matching step stools, trading off two minutes of compressions each. When Crowley bent over to do compressions, her long red hair fell in her face and Aziraphale could see all the way down her scrub top to where her pants were tied at her narrow hips, could see the red lace push up bra she was wearing. He tore his eyes away and filled a syringe with epinephrine, pushed it in. Crowley’s long fingers were at the patient’s neck. “Pulse,” she announced, and stripped off her gloves. 

Aziraphale watched the monitor carefully. The QRS complexes ticked by again, abnormally quickly, a side effect of the epinephrine. Aziraphale picked up the bedside phone and dialed the ICU on call room in New Orleans. Just his luck that Gabriel was the one to answer. 

“Listen,” Aziraphale said urgently. “We just finished running a code on a 58 year old male, the surgeon here called from the ED about him earlier. He’s stable now, but it’s not going to last, can we get a helicopter to transfer him?”

“Aziraphale,” Gabriel said, disapproving and Aziraphale’s heart sunk. “The patient your counterpart called about earlier doesn’t have insurance. There’s no way he can afford a helicopter. I thought we could trust you to manage this situation on your own?” Aziraphale had the phone on speaker. Crowley made an outraged squawking noise from the corner of the room where she was typing into the patient’s chart. 

“Yes, I know, but we tried to handle it here, we really did,” Aziraphale blustered and then Crowley was leaning into his space, speaking directly into the receiver. 

“Doesn’t matter if he has insurance or not. He’ll die if he stays here. Send the fucking helicopter or I’ll call dispatch and get one myself.” Crowley hung up the phone and Aziraphale gaped at her. 

“You just...to an attending?” 

Crowley shrugged, “Gabriel isn’t my attending. To be honest, I probably wouldn’t survive saying something like that to my chief, Hastur, let alone my attending, who is essentially Satan himself.” 

“Are you going to call dispatch?”

“Nah, he’ll send the helicopter.” Crowley said with assurance, then came around the bed to clap Aziraphale on the shoulder. “Well done by the way. That epinephrine really worked didn’t it? Look at you, the guardian angel of bed 9.” 

***

And from then on, it was impossibly worse because every time Crowley saw him, she called him angel. It was “Angel, here’s your coffee,” and “come on angel, finish up your charting so we can go to dinner,” and “seriously, Angel, bowties went out of fashion in 1900, but look if you’re going to walk around wearing one, you can’t have it be crooked, let me--” 

Crowley even did it on work calls sometimes, almost as if she didn’t notice she was doing it. “Angel, the labs came back on that patient you referred for surgery…” 

“Crowley!” Aziraphale admonished. “For all you know I could have you on speaker! What if the nurses hear you, they could tell someone--” 

“Relax, Aziraphale,” Crowley drawled. “No one cares. They’re not going to throw you out of residency, just because you made a friend, even if that friend works for a rival, and better, hospital system.” 

“We’re not friends,” Aziraphale said quickly and hung up, before realizing that he actually did need to know those labs and Crowley never told him what they were.

***  
It was a quiet night for once, and Aziraphale was trying to get some sleep upstairs while Crowley was down in the ED, when the door to the on call room banged open suddenly and Crowley shouted, “Angel, wake up, now!” 

“What?” Aziraphale sat up, rubbing his eyes.

“I haven’t delivered a baby since medical school,” Crowley said at him, eyes wide. “You’re the family med doctor, you deal with it!” 

“What baby?” Aziraphale asked, still a bit sure he was dreaming. 

“The one that is half out of its mom’s uterus downstairs!” 

“Oh, fuck.” 

Aziraphale scrambled for his shoes and followed Crowley back downstairs at a jog. “I didn’t know you cursed,” Crowley said, looking at him with out of the corner of her eye. 

“I don’t” Aziraphale bit back. 

In reality it had been a while since Aziraphale had delivered a baby too, not since one month on L&D his intern year, and he had never had to do it alone. He took deep, calming breaths as Crowley helped him gown and glove. As she closed the gown at the nape of his neck, her hand slipped up and the pad of one long, warm, index finger stroked against his hairline then was gone. “You’ll do fine,” Crowley murmured. 

“Right,” Aziraphale squared his shoulders and walked into the room, Crowley one step behind him. 

Crowley had been absolutely right. The baby was nearly half out of the uterus already, its head smooth and warm under Aziraphale’s fingertips when he did a quick exam. “It’s going to be soon, dear,” he told the woman panting on the gurney. “You’re just going to have to breathe with me now. On three, let’s push. One, two…” 

Thankfully, there were no complications, although Aziraphale sweated through his scrubs as he guided the shoulders to emerge. 

“What is it?” the mother wanted to know. 

“Your baby’s got a penis,” Aziraphale said, and if the mother thought that was an odd way to hear the news, she didn’t say anything although Aziraphale felt Crowley stiffen minutely then relax behind him. Then there was a flurry of activity as they searched for umbilical cord clamps (“preposterous that we don’t have any” Crowley hissed) and ended up having to use two hemostats instead. 

Finally, Aziraphale was stripping off his gloves and gown, swaddling the baby and taking it to be weighed, with promises to be back soon. Crowley followed him into the small office with the scale. Aziraphale held the new baby tightly against him, its small mouth opening in a sleepy, wordless cry. Its eyes blinked up at him and he stroked one finger along its downy head. Aziraphale felt contented, happy, riding high on the endorphins left over now that the adrenaline of the delivery had worn off. Unbidden, he felt the hot prick of tears in the corner of his eyes. He turned away to hide them, but Crowley saw anyway. He felt her lay a warm hand on his shoulder. “Alright angel?” She asked. 

“Of course.” Aziraphale said and gently laid the baby back in the bassinet. “It’s just...so...well, this is why I went into family medicine. This morning, I had an 80 year old patient in my office, and I was refilling her blood pressure meds and she was telling me about how she used to walk to school barefoot and I was just thinking of her hands…” he broke off suddenly. “You must think this is silly, Crowley” he chanced a glance over, and drew a breath at the unexpected, rapt, open expression on her face. 

“No.” Crowley said slowly, “I don’t. Think it’s silly that is.”

“Her hands, Crowley,” Aziraphale said. “They were lined and weathered, and I held them just this morning, and here, now I’m holding these hands,” and he reached out the tip of a pinky, curled it into the newborn’s little palm. “Like a circle I suppose. And I get to be there for all of it…it’s…” Aziraphale had run out of words. 

“Mm” Crowley said in assent, even though Aziraphale hadn’t really said anything, then hooked her narrow chin over Aziraphale’s shoulder to look down at the baby lying in the bassinet. Aziraphale stopped breathing entirely. A stray lock of Crowley’s hair fell into his face, her chin dug into his shoulder. She was close enough that he could smell the faint smell of her sweat beneath the rich cinnamon of her perfume. “Mm” she said again. “Cradle to grave and all that rot I suppose.” 

“It’s not rot!” Aziraphale said admonishingly. 

The weight of Crowley’s chin disappeared from his shoulder. “More like, incision to closure for me,” Crowley said, but with such softness that it almost sounded as if she was saying something else entirely. She was smiling a kind of tender open smile that Aziraphale had only ever seen on her narrow face before when she thought she was alone. He wanted to press his lips to that smile, wanted to lick into her mouth and taste it, he wanted in a desperate, aching way, shocking in its intensity. 

Aziraphale cleared his throat and tried to get a grip on himself. He grabbed the handles of the bassinet, “I’d better,” he said, and wheeled the baby out the door back to the mother’s room. Crowley let him pass in silence, her mouth still turned up faintly at the corners.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Running a code is not sexy. I apologize to all fictional patients in this work who needed CPR in order to further The Drama (TM). The experience of delivering a baby with a skeleton staff late at night, however, is exactly as wonderful and terrifying as described.
> 
> In America, attending physicians (or just "the attending") are generally in charge of both resident physicians and fellows, who are still in training as doctors.


	4. Questions and Answers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: Trans character outed by a shitty boss.

They were sitting in the ED together, the last night they were both on call. After this, Aziraphale only had one more week of the rotation, a handful of clinic days, and Crowley had even less. Aziraphale had convinced himself, quite successfully, that he was not miserable. Aziraphale had always been good at convincing himself of things. 

Crowley was sprawling loose limbed in her chair, clicking idly through Yelp. She had a hobby of leaving one star reviews at expensive places she had never been, and five star reviews at random corner stores and gas station chicken joints. Against his better judgment, Aziraphale found it a bit charming. “Gives the underdogs a chance,” Crowley had said when he asked her about it. 

“Any med school rotations you hated?” Aziraphale asked her, just to pass the time. 

“Oh, pediatrics.” She answered immediately. 

“You don’t like kids?” Aziraphale felt a sudden pang of genuine disappointment and didn’t understand why. 

“No, no,” Crowley said, looking distant. “I like kids. I just...they were really sick you know. And a lot of them didn’t do so well, even though we all tried really hard. Seemed really unfair. Stopped going to temple during my pediatrics rotation.” 

“Jewish?” Aziraphale asked carefully. He hadn’t brought up religion since that church outburst weeks ago. 

Crowley makes a face. “Once. A very long time ago,” she said, and kept idly clicking. Aziraphale turned back to his computer. 

“You know,” Crowley said suddenly, “the other thing about pediatrics, the really frustrating thing is that when you’re a woman, that’s all anyone thinks you should do. All my professors in medical school, my advisor even, it was pediatrics this and pediatrics that and ‘natural nurturing ability.’ Bullshit, I don’t have a nurturing ability!” 

Privately, Aziraphale considered the times he had caught glimpses of Crowley sitting with her patients, holding their hands as they awoke from anesthesia, slipping away right before they regained consciousness, the time he had seen her gently brushing the hair of an older woman with stage four breast cancer who could no longer raise her arms to do it herself. Wisely he said nothing. 

“Pediatrics is great and all, nothing against it, but that kind of attitude is just sexist is what it is,” Crowley said. “Never mind I’ve wanted to be a surgeon from day one. And once they accepted that, then it was, oh, but what about pediatric surgery. Fuck.” 

Crowley glanced over at him, almost timidly. “I guess you wouldn’t know anything about how sexist medicine can be?” And the way she phrased it was far more of a question than Aziraphale was comfortable with. 

A wave of cold passed over him. “I wouldn’t,” he said icily. 

“Right,” Crowley was still staring at him, and he wished she would go back to whatever she had been doing on the computer. “You know you can tell me. Anything.” She said quietly, but fervently. “Nothing would change how I feel about you.” 

“How...how do you feel about me?” Aziraphale asked tremulously, and immediately wanted to take it back. 

Crowley was still looking at him intently. She looked like she was choosing her words very carefully, weighing them on her tongue, which darted out to wet her lips. “I’ve only known you five and a half weeks,” she said eventually. “I think it would be absurd for me to say it now.” 

“You don’t,” Aziraphale said, breath caught in his throat. 

“I do, though.” 

“You wouldn’t, if…” Aziraphale trails off. 

“I think you’d find I would,” Crowley said with an odd kind of reverent certainty. The moment stretched. Aziraphale looked at Crowley’s hands, long elegant fingers, fine, dexterous, surgeon’s fingers. Beautiful. His own fingers twitched against his thigh. He could...he wanted…

“What do you see in me?” Aziraphale asked abruptly, then was ashamed of the question. Crowley looked taken aback, like whatever she had been expecting Aziraphale to say it wasn’t that. 

“You really don’t know?” Crowley asked. Aziraphale looked away quickly, shook his head.

“Well,” Crowley said eventually. “Do you know how I ended up here?” 

“I assumed you requested it.” 

“Nope,” Crowley said, drawing out the end of the word. “No, what happened was, I started asking a lot of questions, see. I started asking things like, why are we discharging this homeless patient before social work got to see him? And, why is it that all the uninsured patients on the transplant list keep getting passed over and all the new livers and kidneys and such are going to patients who literally flew in on private jets from Atlanta or Houston or someplace? Also, what’s up with the pudding in the hospital cafeteria? It’s only been vanilla for ages, why don’t they ever have chocolate anymore? Anyway…next thing you know, I’m looking at my rotation schedule and it’s got “Gulf Coast Regional” stamped on it and I take it to Dagon--our department secretary--and I say, where is this? Houston? Baton Rouge? Never heard of this place before. And Dagon just smiles at me and that’s when I knew I was fucked. Definitely didn’t request this rotation. Believe me, I did not. Want. To be here.” Crowley shook her head. 

“But then you,” she continued, and Aziraphale tensed. “You walked in, all eager that first afternoon. I took one look at you and I knew. I thought, that one’s different. You actually like it here. You like the people here. You like treating their asthma and their hypertension--God it’s so dull!--but you love it. You like holding their hands and listening to them go on about what it was like years ago and letting their little kids blow their noses on your nice clothes. You really like it, it’s not an act the way it is for a lot of the sanctimonious primary care assholes I’ve met. The way you smile when a patient remembers you name or brings you cookies, they made themselves, ugh” Crowley broke off making a face. “You should see yourself. It’s absolutely ridiculous how happy being a part of these people’s mundane little lives make you. And the most ridiculous part of it is that if they really knew you,” Crowley fixed him with a glance that felt like it cut right through him. “If they knew everything about you, they would hate you. You know that, and somehow you don’t even care, you forgive them. You…” Crowley stopped, the tips of her ears coloring. “You make me remember why I wanted to be a doctor in the first place,” she mumbled, looking down. 

“Crowley,” Aziraphale breathed, astonished and hardly sure how to respond. “That’s the loveliest thing anyone’s ever said about me.”

“Ugh,” she said, burying her face in her hands. “Tell the whole world I’m a softie why don’t you!” She pointed an accusing finger at him. “You know, everyone in my medical school class was afraid of me. I had a reputation for being a snake. A well-deserved reputation. Six weeks with you and it’s all ruined.”

“Oh, Crowley…” Aziraphale started, something warm and tender rising in his chest. Crowley’s hand was lying on the desk between them. It would not be so hard after all for him to cover it with his own. He was looking at her fingers, and she was looking at him looking at his fingers and he lifted his hand slowly--

Aziraphale’s pager went off. It was the night nurse upstairs, asking for another dose of hydralazine for a patient in bed four. “I’ve got to—” Aziraphale said, gesturing upstairs.

“Yep,” Crowley said tightly, withdrawing her hand from the desk between them.

Crowley’s pale eyes followed Aziraphale all the way down the hall.

***

It was raining the day Crowley was meant to leave, so hard that she got drenched just taking her few boxes of things from her apartment to her car. Aziraphale had a rare clinic day which finished early. He stood at the window of his apartment watching Crowley cursing in the rain, shirt clinging to her slim figure, for perhaps a minute longer than was appropriate before he hurried across the street to help her. 

“Thanks,” she said, when the last box was loaded. “Here, it’s raining so much, I’ll drive you home.”

Aziraphale slid into the passenger seat of Crowley’s car, which was sleek and red and had vanity plates that said SURGN (“isn’t it a little much?” he had asked the first time he had seen them, “that’s the whole point,” Crowley had said, grinning). Crowley pulled a long, lazy U turn and then they were at Aziraphale’s apartment, one block away and just across the street from where Crowley had stayed.

They sat awkwardly in the car, watching the rain fall in sheets outside, flooding the street. 

“Right, well,” Crowley tapped her fingers on the steering wheel. “I’ll see you around then. Back in NOLA maybe. I’ve got your number.” 

“Yes,”Aziraphale said, not trusting himself to say much more. 

Crowley looked away and Aziraphale didn’t move to open the car door.

“Look,” Crowley glanced over at him, then shifted in her seat to face him. “Aziraphale, I really like you. I mean, I really, really like you. But I’m not going to go where I’m not wanted. Maybe you’re not into women, or not into me…” she broke off. Took a deep breath. “But I’ll get over it. Somehow. Just tell me, do I have any reason to call you?”

Aziraphale’s voice stuck in his throat. “I’m not…” he said.

“Not interested?” there was no mistaking the hurt in Crowley’s voice.

“I’m interested,” Aziraphale said.

“Then what’s the problem?” Crowley asked, almost angrily. Then she exhaled long and slow. “Actually, I think I have an idea of what the problem is, and I might be completely out of line by bringing it up, but it would be ridiculous if you were getting all worked up about something that I’ve been trying to tell you for weeks doesn’t matter to me. Aziraphale,” she said gently, “I know you weren’t born looking like a man and it’s fine.”

Aziraphale knew as soon as Crowley started speaking what was coming, but it still felt like a blow. “It’s not ridiculous,” Aziraphale he said hotly, ashamed to feel tears clinging to his lashes. “I mean, what if you did turn out care about it? What if we tried to get together and you found out and told someone, one of my patients or the nurses--”

“You really think so little of me?” Crowley interrupted, sounding genuinely hurt. “Granted, I don’t have the best moral compass, but…”

“I think so little of everyone,” Aziraphale huffed out. 

“Oh, angel,” Crowley sighed, and slowly, gently, she laid a hand on the back of Aziraphale’s neck. “Alright?”

Aziraphale nodded. And then, because he knew it would worry him like a splinter stuck in a wound if he didn’t ask, “how did you know? Was it something I did, or…”?

Crowley barked out a short laugh. “Of course not. It was your asshole attending. Here,” she shifted to dig her phone out of her extraordinarily tight jeans pockets, all the while still rubbing soothing circles on the back of Aziraphale’s neck with her other hand. She scrolled through the phone, and then handed it over. “This was the email Gabriel sent me, right before the rotation started.”

Aziraphale stared. The email looked like a typical new site orientation email, the same one Aziraphale had received, with log-on information for the medical record system and instructions on how to obtain a badge. At the bottom of the email was a line about how Crowley would be joined by a family medicine resident, and then Aziraphale was staring at a first name he hadn’t seen in years.

“I was excited,” Crowley said casually. “Two lady doctors, taking on rural Louisiana together. That would show all the misogynist backwoods creeps out here a thing or two. And then I met you, of course, and I figured that there must have been a clerical error. Like, your name didn’t get changed in the system properly or something. Now I know Gabriel a little better, I’m just going to assume it was deliberate though.”

Aziraphale was still staring at the email in shock.

“I wonder actually,” Crowley said, in an offhand way that meant she was really thinking about it quite hard indeed. “Does doing something like this deliberately constitute a hate crime or harassment do you think?”

“Definitely not in Louisiana,” Aziraphale swallowed hard. This email certainly put into perspective the negative reception he had gotten at other off site rotations in the past. Probably not the first time Gabriel had made this particular clerical error.

“Well,” Crowley’s hand was gentle, still on Aziraphale’s neck, a grounding presence. “We’ll have to think up another way to get him to stop then.”

“We?” Aziraphale asked, turning to Crowley.

“Er,” she looked uncertain for the first time. Her hand fell from the back of Aziraphale’s neck. “I mean as long as that’s…”

Aziraphale kissed her. It was gentle at first, just a simple press of lips against lips, then Crowley turned her head, made an aching sound, surged against Aziraphale and all of a sudden her tongue was in Aziraphale’s mouth and he was tasting her, burying one hand in her hair and the other was at the hem of her shirt already. Crowley grabbed it, pressed it under and up. They both made a noise at the first brush of his fingers against her breast. She pulled away to gasp against his mouth and he chased the noise, licking after it, then letting his mouth fall to her long elegant neck.

“Fuck,” Crowley said. Aziraphale pulled back. Crowley’s eyes were wide, her angular face was beautiful in the dappled light that fell through the rain all around them. She leaned in again and said soft against his lips. “Aziraphale, invite me inside.”

He felt something odd ripple down his spine, a little sideways jolt almost like déjà vu, then Crowley ruined the moment by pleading, “angel, come on, I’ve already packed my sheets and I haven’t fucked on a bare mattress since college and those were dark times indeed. Unless,” she pulled back further, studying him. “This isn’t too fast for you, is it? I mean, I can slow down, we can date properly if you want, not that a hospital schedule is conducive to romancing but we can work around—”

Aziraphale kissed her again to shut her up, just a chaste press of lips, as full of feeling as Aziraphale could make it. “Crowley dear,” he said, pulling back, “I would love it if you would come inside.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's still a lot of this story left, but that was (pretty much) it for the medical drama AU part (plus/minus a little gender affirming sex to come)! Oh boy was this a journey through my own Feelings (so many they deserve a capital letter) regarding gender identity and what it means to be a doctor. What an honor to bring other people along for this crazy ride!


	5. The Very First Day of the Rest of Their Lives, Part I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Essentially this whole chapter is just an excuse for me to use the phrase "make The Effort" in a human AU and I apologize for nothing. 
> 
> CW: Explicit sex, a brief discussion of anatomy between a trans person and a cis person (treated responsibly I hope!)

Aziraphale’s hands trembled as he unlocked his front door. Crowley crowded against him as he struggled with the lock, her wet hair dripping raindrops down his neck. Aziraphale turned to her and said, “what will the neighbors--” and then felt Crowley reach around him to open the door, push him back through it. 

“Fuck the neighbors,” she said against his lips, then was kissing him again, hungrily, in the hallway of his building, not even bothering to swing the door shut behind them. Helplessly, as if someone else had taken control of his body, Aziraphale pushed Crowley back against the door jamb and she made a sound that sent a shock of heat straight to the vee of his legs. He bit at her neck, shocked at his own reckless wanting. 

“Fuck,” she panted against him. 

Somehow, they fumbled their way into his apartment, and then all of a sudden Crowley was there in his bedroom, unbuttoning her shirt, like something out of a dream. She was wearing the same red lacy bra Aziraphale had glimpsed a few weeks ago, the one that had featured in a shameful number of fantasies since. He ran a finger along the edge of it, dipped it inside to brush against a nipple, then, because he couldn’t help himself, bent his head to trace the path of his finger with his tongue. Crowley cried out, swore, clutched at his hair and pulled him closer to her, pulled his face into her chest. They fell onto Aziraphale’s bed and she ground down against him, making little noises as Aziraphale squeezed and licked. 

“Angel,” she gasped, bitten off, pushing at his shoulders. He pulled away reluctantly to look up at her. 

“Aziraphale, what do you want?” Crowley asked, her hands fluttering uncertainly at the buttons of his shirt. 

Aziraphale had an easy answer to that. “I want to make you come,” he said. 

“Ah, yeah,” improbably, Crowley was blushing, color rushing high on her cheeks. “Yeah, definitely, let’s do that. But um...I want it to be good for you. Like, really good. Please let me--” she broke off and sat up, leaning over Aziraphale, staring at him intently. “I don’t know what’s good for you, I don’t know even what you want me to call...things…or how you want to be touched, or what I should or shouldn’t undress” she gestured up and down over his body. “I really, really don’t want to fuck this up.”

Aziraphale sat up too, arousal ebbing a bit from the fierce unthinking thing it had been in the hallway. He knew they were going to have to have this talk at some point in the proceedings. Best to get it over with quickly, he supposed. 

“I’ve had the top surgery,” he said, gesturing towards his chest, “but not, um, anything below the belt. Just so you know what to expect.” 

Crowley nodded. Aziraphale searched her face carefully. She didn’t look put off, only mildly curious. “I do have a dick,” Aziraphale continued. “It just...um...takes a bit of effort to get it situated. But that’s how I usually like to have sex.” 

“Right,” Crowley said slowly. 

“I mean, it’s silicone,” Aziraphale squirmed. “But it’s my dick, so just..ah..don’t call it a toy or anything.” 

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Crowley said, and leaned down to kiss him again, lips soft, but insistent against his own. She shifted and the kiss turned filthy, her tongue fucking into his mouth all wet heat and smooth strokes. This kiss had all the banked heat of intent behind it. Oh god, Aziraphale thought to himself, oh god we’re actually going to--, she’s going to let me--

Crowley pulled away with one last wet swipe at his lower lip. She cupped the back of his head with a tenderness as fierce as the kiss they had just shared. 

“Aziraphale,” she whispered. “Make the effort.” 

***

Aziraphale always hated this part, the adjusting of straps, how artificial and sporty the harness looked against his legs, like he was about to go climb a rock wall, the way the nylon framed a softness in his thighs that testosterone had only just begun to smooth away. He made Crowley turn away while he got everything ready, which she did with such earnestness that it almost made up for having to ask in the first place. He slid his boxers back on over it all, letting his dick hang out the open fly. 

“Alright,” he said, trying not to sound as nervous as he felt. Having sex like this was not new to him, but it had been a long time and never had it felt so momentous. Crowley had said she didn’t want to fuck things up, but Aziraphale didn’t see how she could. He was more afraid of scaring her away, ruining something wonderful. 

Crowley turned back around, kneeling on the bed as he stood before her. “Fuck,” she breathed, “you have a beautiful dick.” 

Actually, it was quite average, Aziraphale thought, painstakingly so in fact, because he had been hyper aware of how absurd it would be to have a dick that was didn’t go with the size and shape of his body. But the way Crowley looked at him, he didn’t feel average. He believed her. She shuffled closer on her knees. 

“Can I?” She asked and pressed her face into his thigh.

“Of course,” Aziraphale said, surprised. The way she had scrambled out of her clothes as he turned to make the effort, the way she had commanded him, in no uncertain terms, “shirt too,” while still facing the wall, he had assumed she would would want to skip straight to penetration. “But you don’t have to, you know,” he said, worried suddenly that she was operating on some misplaced assumption of how he would want to be treated. 

“I know,” Crowley breathed, mouth opening tantalizingly close to the head of his dick. “I know, but I fucking want to. You’ve no idea.” She looked up at him, and it was a sight to ruin Aziraphale, his dick bobbing in front of Crowley’s kiss-red lips as her beautiful pale eyes fixed his own. 

“Please,” he managed, and then her mouth descended. It was impossibly good. Better than he could have imagined. Her head bobbed and pulled at his dick as she sucked, shifted it against his flesh and he barely bit back a moan. She pulled off of him with a wet obscene noise. 

“You can be loud, Aziraphale,” she said, “I want to hear you.” Her lips wrapped around him again and he groaned without holding back, his hips jerking unconsciously forward. He started to apologize, but her hands came up to his hips, encouraging. Aziraphale fucked into her mouth again, shallow and gentle as possible and she moaned around him, took him impossibly deeper. One hand left his hips, to wrap around the base of his cock, then shifted, pushing his balls back against the juncture of his legs. 

“Ok?” she asked, her voice hoarse in a way that sent another pulse of desire low into Aziraphale’s belly. 

“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah. That’s...that’s really good actually.” 

She smiled at him, all teeth, then her lips and tongue were back, maddeningly tight, hot against the skin of his belly as her mouth moved down his shaft. She reached up to guide his hand to her hair and there was no way he was going to last like this. 

“Fuck, Crowley,” he groaned against her, sliding his fingers through her hair. 

“Hell, I like it when you curse,” Crowley said, pulling off again. “And you don’t even know. Your dick in my mouth, it’s fucking exquisite Aziraphale. Why didn’t we do this six weeks ago? I would have had you fuck my mouth every night if I could, I would have taken it anywhere you wanted me, in the hospital if you wanted, in the bathroom, the on call room, my car in the parking lot. You could have just looked at me, and taken it out and I would have been on my fucking knees wherever, whenever--” 

Aziraphale did something unspeakably rude and put his dick back into her mouth to quiet her. Aziraphale was abstractly horrified at his lack of manners, but there was nothing for it, he was going to come just from her words alone, he was this close, and he was so desperate to come in her mouth, wanted more than anything to see her lips stretched around him as he came. She swallowed around his dick, and the subtle motion of it, the visual of the bob of her long elegant throat, her red lips was enough. 

“Fuck,” Aziraphale swore again, hunched over and shivering as he felt his orgasm rush out of him. “Fuck.” 

Crowley released his dick and was standing in one fluid motion, pushing him down onto the bed with jerky, desperate movements. Her hand found his cock and he shivered, the flesh around and beneath it oversensitive. 

“Fuck, can I?” Crowley asked. “I’m so close, I need--”

“Anything,” Aziraphale said, “you can have anything.” He gasped as Crowley slid down onto his dick in one fluid motion. She grabbed his hand and pushed it between them. Aziraphale moved his fingers shakily against where her slick opening was stretched by his dick. All it took was one half circle and then she was gasping, shuddering against him, clutching at his shoulders and licking desperately into his mouth. He kissed her through it, kept stroking at her clit, until the kisses turned languid and she gently pushed his hand away. She untangled herself from him gingerly, and then turned to lie next to him, curled against his chest. 

They didn’t speak for a long time. Aziraphale didn’t know if he could speak after all that. He felt completely fucked out, wrung dry, in an embarrassingly short amount of time. Dimly, he became aware that Crowley was tracing one of his top surgery scars with a manicured nail. He squirmed a bit under her and the hand stilled. 

“Does this bother you?” Crowley asked.

“Ah, no...well, a little,” Aziraphale admitted. 

“I’m sorry. I was just admiring how well the scar healed. I can’t even see any stitch marks.”

“Ah,” Aziraphale said, something in him relaxing, “well, a personal friend did the surgery.”

Crowley sat up suddenly, peered down at him through the tangled curtain of her hair. “Hopefully not too personal of a friend.”

Aziraphale laughed, barely managing to cover it with a cough. “There’s no need to be jealous. You’re the first surgeon I’ve ever slept with.”

“And I’ll be the only,” Crowley said, in a fierce rush, then seemed to realize what she had said. 

She flopped down next to Aziraphale and covered her face with her hands. “Oh fuck” 

“It’s ok,” Aziraphale said carefully, a warm joy welling up inside of him. “Crowley, it’s ok. I don’t want to find any other surgeons to sleep with. Actually, I don’t want to find anyone else to sleep with. Or to go to brunch with, or to watch bad movies with, or to cook with or…” he looked over at her, where she was still hiding her face behind her hands. “You understand?”

One golden eye peeked out at him from between her fingers and then, improbably, she burst out laughing. “I think we’re both ridiculous. All of this, this whole thing is ridiculous.” 

“Maybe,” Aziraphale said, peeling one of her hands off her face and clasping it in his own. “But I’m very glad to be ridiculous with you.” 

Crowley made a face that somehow managed to convey both deep disgust at the sappiness of the situation and adoration so profound Aziraphale trembled anew. “So, I guess you might say yes then, if I were to suggest I stay here with you tonight and tomorrow and drive you back to New Orleans this weekend when your rotation finishes up?”

“Crowley, that would be lovely,” Aziraphale said, clutching her hand even more firmly. “I’d like nothing more.” 

A blush was rising high on Crowley’s cheekbones. She looked desperately pleased, and like she was trying and failing to hide it. “I pick the music though,” she said, “God only knows what you listen to. Probably classical symphonies and Rogers and Hammerstein. Not in my car, it’s going to be Best of Queen the entire way.” 

“I’m sure it will be lovely,” Aziraphale said, feeling his face might split in two from all the smiling. 

“Ugh, I’m not lovely,” Crowley said, pushing herself up on her elbows, again to look down at him. “I’m a terror. I’m a snake, remember?” 

“It’s alright, it will be our secret,” Aziraphale said, and reached up to cup her breast again, run his thumb speculatively over the nipple. She shivered and her expression turned predatory. “Ready to go again then?”

“Mmm,” Aziraphale said, still feeling pleasantly floaty. “We’ve got all afternoon; I could get there.” 

***

And indeed, they did. Aziraphale fucked her thoroughly the next time, slow, gentle, nestled between her legs in missionary position until she was almost crying from it, begging for more and simultaneously pleading for it never to end. Then, later, after a quick dinner, again in the shower, then again, a vicious doggy style pounding Aziraphale hadn’t even known himself capable of when Crowley complained about how gentle the missionary had been. Aziraphale had never had this much sex before in such little time. He was actually chafed the next morning, forced to discretely adjust himself through his clothes in clinic, but that didn’t stop him from having Crowley over the arm of his couch, this time with just his fingers and his mouth, as soon as he walked in the door that night.

In all this frantic lovemaking--for, at least to himself, Aziraphale could admit that’s what it was--Aziraphale waited for the other shoe to drop. It felt like a prelude to a goodbye, like the kind of thing lovers would do before going their separate ways without seeing one another again in their lifetimes. 

But, shockingly, wonderfully, it did not end. Crowley drove him back to New Orleans, dropped him off at his apartment in the Garden District with a lengthy goodbye kiss, then drove on to her own apartment in Mid City. Aziraphale sat on his couch, surrounded by his familiar things, and felt itchy under the collar, miserable, and very lonely. As the evening fell, his phone rang, and it was Crowley, asking to come over, and then she was there nestled up next to him again, wonderfully warm. 

***

Days turned into weeks. Aziraphale now had an alarm permanently set for 3:40am, in addition to his own 5:30am alarm. He grumbled getting saddled with a surgery schedule despite not being a surgeon, but he sat up in bed just the same to offer Crowley a goodbye kiss as she pulled her scrubs on each morning. 

As October rolled into November, the days turned crisp and clear. Aziraphale came home from a long day in clinic to find warm sunlight streaming in the windows, lighting up Crowley’s fire red hair as she hummed to herself and tossed things into a large pot in the kitchen. Aziraphale’s heart suddenly was so full of a feeling, he was sure it was spilling out, drenching everything in the apartment like the golden evening light. He was short of breath just trying to contain it, to hold back the overwhelming tide. He saw Crowley in the kitchen and the thought rose unbidden, I could see her every day and never tire of her, I could be this with her, for our whole lives, for a thousand lives, for eternity, and this bright feeling would never dim. I could--

Aziraphale was never bold, he never rushed into things, but caught up in the swell of feeling, he walked the five steps from the doorway to the kitchen, reached out and caught Crowley in his arms, and astonished himself by being the first to say it. But of course, she had already been saying it for weeks, for months even, every time she gave him a ride home from clinic, every time she took him out for drinks, or put on Rogers and Hammerstein on Saturday afternoons with good natured grumbling, or cooked him dinner after a long shift of her own, as she was doing now. “I love you,” Aziraphale whispered into her hair. Crowley stiffened in his arms, then swayed, turned to face him. Around her, the light outside the windows, the apartment, the stove, became so bright it began to dissolve into misty white. 

“Angel,” she said, “I--” and then she too dissolved into a mist. Aziraphale reached after her, only to realize that his arms, too, were dissolving, that everything was disappearing into bright, white nothingness.


	6. Bachelor Party

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If this chapter feels like whiplash from the last one, good, it should! CW: gambling, homophobia, Sandalphon and Gabriel being massive dicks.

“We are now approaching our final descent into Las Vegas International Airport. Please stow your tray tables and put away all electronic devices.” 

Aziraphale shook himself awake, cringing a bit as he peeled his cheek from his tray table where it had been glued in a puddle of dried drool. Aziraphale had been having such an odd dream, something about being a doctor, and New Orleans, and maybe there were wings involved? Well, he always did sleep frightfully badly on planes. 

In the airport terminal, after picking up his bags, he stopped in the bathroom briefly to run water over his face and try to freshen up. He already regretted this trip, but there was nothing for it. When he had first gotten the email from Gabriel, he had been so very flattered to be included that he had forgotten how small Gabriel and Uriel and the rest made him feel. It was only after he had bought the ticket that he remembered how cruel they could be, that he wondered if he had only been included as laughingstock, as entertainment for the others for the inevitable lulls in Vegas’ delights. It was just like college all over again, he thought morosely, splashing water on his face. Crawling, craven, desperate to be accepted by the cool kids, willing to put up with anything to be part of their group. Only, in college, Aziraphale had been mostly unconscious of how silly and humiliating it all was. But even now, ten years later, a tenure track professor, fully aware of how unnecessary the approval of Gabriel and the rest was, he still wanted it. What did that make him? 

Gabriel had picked Caesars Palace for the bachelor party because of course he did. Aziraphale, who actually studied ancient Greece and Rome for a living, cringed internally as the lyft driver pulled up the long drive flanked by vaguely classical statues. Gabriel was a man whose personal dictionary did not include the word “subtlety” and whose aesthetic tastes had ceased to mature right around the time he attended his first toga party. He was fun though, Aziraphale reminded himself. Gabriel was fun and cool and Aziraphale was going to have fun, and be cool, this weekend by association. 

Michael was waiting for Aziraphale at the check in desk, just as tall and imposing as he remembered. 

“Better drop your bags quickly,” Michael said, “party’s already started.” 

“Right, right, of course,” Aziraphale said, fumbling a bit with the handle of his (horribly outdated) carpet bag. Michael did not reach out to help him. 

“I’ll just--” Aziraphale said awkwardly and moved off towards the bank of elevators in the back of the casino. 

***

Sandalphon, Gabriel’s best man, had put together the schedule. It was chock full of exactly the kind of things Aziraphale would have expected, including visits to a different strip club every night of the weekend. 

“I might skip the strip club tonight,” Aziraphale tried to say as they all moved from one of the casino’s many bars to a low stakes poker table. Aziraphale was still sweating a bit from the mad dash to his room and back, and he pulled at his collar to loosen his bow tie, which he belatedly realized he should have left off entirely. 

Gabriel clapped him on the back jovially and said, loud enough for the whole casino floor to hear, “Don’t worry, Aziraphale, Sandalphon found a few that have boys as well as girls, ‘specially for you. Wanted to make you feel included, see.”

Behind Gabriel, Sandalphon leered. Aziraphale shuddered. He and Sandalphon had never really gotten on. Something about Sandalphon’s popularity--and brutality--on the lacrosse field had never really sat well with Aziraphale. 

“Right, well,” Aziraphale said, “wouldn’t want to disappoint I suppose. It’s just that the ethics of stripping in a capitalist system with a low minimum wage and---” 

“That’s the spirit!” Gabriel roared, interrupting him, seemly oblivious to the brittle smile Aziraphale had pasted onto his face. “Now, let’s get this Vegas trip started! Who’s ready to lose to me in poker?”

Aziraphale sighed and settled into his chair. The table filled up around him, mostly with members of the bachelor party. 

“Not too late, am I?” A stranger ambled up and stood behind the chair next to Aziraphale, then, without being invited, sat down. The man was tall and lanky, dressed all in black, with red hair and a skinny piece of silver fabric draped around his neck in a way that suggested it couldn’t decide if it was a tie or a necklace. He was wearing sunglasses, inside of all places (perhaps he was a poker professional Aziraphale thought? Didn’t serious players sometimes hide their eyes?). In pieces the outfit was outrageous, absolutely should have been outrageous, but all together, worn with an insouciant slouch by the man beside him it was...well, hot. The man smirked at Aziraphale and raised one eyebrow just slightly over the rim of his glasses as if he had heard Aziraphale’s thoughts. Flustered, Aziraphale blushed and turned away, just in time to catch the tail end of a story Sandalphon was drunkenly telling about college. 

“...so, we went back while they were all in class and completely wrecked their house. I mean, we dumped their furniture on the lawn, pissed on their mattresses, threw everything that was in the fridge on the stairs, it was epic, like, epic destruction of biblical proportions. And those co-op guys deserved it all. Telling the New York Times all about their naked parties and orgies, making Princeton look bad?...We sure shut them up, didn’t we Gabriel?”

“We did indeed!” Gabriel said jovially. “Those were the days Sandalphon, those were the days. Couldn’t do something like that anymore. Kids these days are so soft.” 

Aziraphale shuddered. He tried his best to forget about days like that. He had been friends with a few co-op guys before the wrath of Sandalphon descended, but they had stopped speaking to him afterwards, even when he came around the house to try and apologize. 

“Hey, remember that time…” Sandalphon continued and Aziraphale thought, oh no here we go, with a feeling of dread deep in his stomach because he knew what was coming next. 

“Remember that time we gave Aziraphale here the Sacred Drum and he lost it? Right before we were about to pledge in the new members.” 

“You know,” Gabriel said frowning, “I’m actually still a bit frustrated about that. How did you even manage to lose it Aziraphale? A great big drum like that? Hard to misplace.” Aziraphale squirmed under the condescending tone. It took him right back to when he was eighteen. It made him want to do better at the same time as he resented it bitterly. 

“You know, I’m always distracted,” he hedged nervously. “Surprised I haven’t forgotten my own head yet.” 

“Hmm, that is right…” Gabriel mused. “That’s right, I remember now, you were very self-centered that semester, all wrapped up in questioning your sexuality then announcing it to the world, as if it wasn’t obvious to all of us how very gay you were, I can see how you got distracted. But still, it’s was a big fucking drum. And we trusted you with it as the Eating Club historian.” 

Why did you even invite me here? Aziraphale wanted to ask. But he held back. Confrontation had never been his strong suit. “I was very distracted, yes,” he said. “Just distracted, that’s all.” Out of the side of his eye, Aziraphale saw the stranger with the sunglasses stiffen minutely, and draw in a breath as if he wanted to say something, but the moment passed. 

“Hmm,” Gabriel said and looked ready to continue the conversation, but the dealer tapped the table meaningfully and they began to play. 

****

Only a few hands later, Gabriel was already done with poker. 

“How about blackjack instead? Or roulette?” Uriel suggested gently. 

“Yeah, yeah,” Gabriel got to his feet a bit unsteadily. “Let’s do it!” 

“I think I’ll play here a little while longer,” Aziraphale said, tightly, not quite ready to forgive Gabriel for bringing up the Drum Incident again. 

“Laaaammme,” Gabriel said, and giggled, seemingly unaware of Aziraphale’s tone. He must already be quite drunk, Aziraphale realized. “Suit yourself, I guess. We’ll be over there, by the roulette.” And he tottered off, propped up on Sandalphon and Uriel’s shoulders. The table was much quieter with them gone. Just Aziraphale, the stranger in sunglasses, and a woman with bright red hair and a red leather jacket, drinking alone and playing with ruthless efficiency. 

“Good call, that,” The man in sunglasses said as the dealer collected the cards and shuffled again. 

“Excuse me?” Aziraphale asked politely.

“Look, I understand,” sunglasses said, “If my friends were that terrible, I would take any excuse to get away from them too.” 

“My friends aren’t terrible,” Aziraphale said, picking up his cards for the next hand. “They’re just drunk.”

The man let out a long, slow hiss of breath. “Yeah, I’m not sure that they’re any better sober. How long have they been bullying you for being gay?”

“What, that’s not---” Aziraphale spluttered. “That’s not the issue at all. Michael’s gay too, no one bothers him about it.” But of course, that wasn’t quite right, Aziraphale thought. Michael was gay, but he had come out, proud and defiant, to the whole football team, then had gone on to have his best season yet. He was engaged to an investment banker who was thin, tall, muscular, just like him. They had had the loveliest engagement photos. An island in the Caribbean, Michael down on one knee, his finance in a white Brooks Brothers sweater, barefoot in the sand. When Aziraphale had come out sophomore year, he had pulled at his collar awkwardly, said, “uh, guys, I think…” and hardly anyone had paid him any attention, but then after that, the barbs about his growing belly had become even more pointed. 

The stranger seemed to see to see at least some of this thought process on Aziraphale’s face because the corners of his mouth turned up in a half smirk of victory and which grew larger a few seconds later as he laid down a full house and collected the chips from the center of the table. 

“I’m going to play one more hand, then I’m out,” the stranger announced to the dealer.

“Me too,” Aziraphale decided. 

“To the last hand then,” the stranger said, and gave a jaunty little wave. 

Aziraphale was barely paying attention to the game at this point, and had been simply matching the other players’ bets, but when looked down at the cards on the table and the cards in his hand, he almost gasped. He had a royal flush. The absolute best hand in poker. The woman across the table had folded after the turn, so it was down to just him and the stranger. Aziraphale was never, ever, rash, but then again, he had never had a royal flush before. What could it hurt to be a little bold? 

“All in,” he said, and pushed his chips to the center. 

The stranger in sunglasses cocked his head to the side and regarded him. Aziraphale could feel the weight of his gaze even behind the sunglasses. He squirmed and tried not to let what was in his hand show on his face. 

“You’re bluffing,” the stranger said eventually. “I’m all in too.”

They laid down their cards. The stranger had a pair of aces. Aziraphale collected the money from the table, chancing a smug glance over as he did so. However, the man in sunglasses didn’t look frustrated or dejected at all. In fact, he looked ecstatic. 

“Look at you,” he said, leaning back in his chair, “surprising me. No one ever surprises me.” 

“Just got lucky,” Aziraphale averted his eyes, focusing on stacking his chips. 

“Weellll maybe,” the lanky stranger said, drawing out the first word. “But since you’re a rich man now, don’t you think you ought to buy me a drink?”

“Oh, er,” Aziraphale said, flushing. The stranger tipped his head at him meaningfully. Aziraphale got the sense that he was being stared at intensely again, although he couldn’t see the man’s eyes behind the sunglasses. “I mean, this is really low stakes poker, I’m not that much richer than before, I don’t suppose.” 

The stranger sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “In that case,” the stranger said, and then, enunciating each word extremely carefully, “how about I, buy you,” he waggled his eyebrows suggestively over his sunglasses in a way that Aziraphale found quite impressive, “a drink.” The stranger let those words hang in the air for a minute. Aziraphale stared at him confused. 

“But if you’re not interested…” the stranger said and started to get up from his chair. 

Aziraphale heard the dealer clear her throat meaningfully. She gestured to him to lean over. “I know it’s not my place,” she said in his ear, “but that man just asked you on a date and you mumbled something insulting about finances.” 

“Oh, oh!” Aziraphale said and hurried after the stranger’s retreating form. Behind him, he did not see as the dealer smiled a small, secretive smile, and continued shuffling her cards. In fact, later he would struggle to remember anything about the dealer at all. 

Aziraphale caught the stranger by the sleeve just as he was stepping off the casino floor, headed for the door to the street. He whirled around and gave Aziraphale such a look that his sunglass lenses themselves seemed to radiate deep suspicion and affront. 

“I...er...not the greatest with social cues,” Aziraphale made a face, mentally backpedaled again, heart hammering. “That is, um, could I buy you a drink?” he tried. 

The stranger regarded him stone faced for a second longer, then suddenly split into a grin. “Why, I thought you’d never ask,” he said lightly. “Of course.” 

“Oh.” Aziraphale hadn’t planned further than the asking and now he felt himself at a loss. “Wonderful!” They stared at each other awkwardly. 

“What would you like?” Aziraphale started to say, just at the same time as the stranger said, “Want to go someplace else?”

“You know that buying me a drink is a euphemism, right?” the stranger said.

“Yes, yes,” Aziraphale blustered. “But maybe I actually would like to buy you a drink?” he ventured. Aziraphale couldn’t say what it was about the red haired stranger that intrigued him, but he was still riding high from winning the hand of poker and he wasn’t ready to let him walk out into the night just yet. And the alternative was going back to Roulette and then probably a strip club with the bachelor party. “You know, actually,” Aziraphale found himself saying quite without intending to, “I heard there’s a new restaurant in the Bellagio that’s Zagat rated, and I wanted to try it and well, what would you say to dinner? We could have that drink afterwards of course?” 

The man looked like Aziraphale had shocked him. “We’re complete strangers and you want to go out and have a multi course meal together? A nice multi course meal, at a place that’s Zagat rated?” 

“You propositioned me for sex not even a minute ago!,” Aziraphale forced out, blushing. “I hardly think it is more scandalous to share a meal!” 

“Well, when you put it that way…” the man said consideringly. “Dinner at the Bellagio sounds great.” 

“Lovely,” Aziraphale said, belatedly realizing he hadn’t even asked the stranger for his name. “Er...” 

“Crowley,” the man said, holding out a hand, “Anthony J. Crowley, but everyone just calls me by my last name.” 

“Aziraphale,” Aziraphale said, taking the extended hand. Crowley’s fingers were long, thin, and smooth in his grasp. Completely unbidden, an image arose in Aziraphale’s mind so vivid that it was accompanied by the ghost of a sensation, the idea of those same long fingers sliding into him, coaxing him open, gently rubbing. It hit Aziraphale like a physical blow, and he sucked in a breath, held Crowley’s hand longer than perhaps he should have, savoring the feel of those fingers again his palm. Crowley cocked his head at him curiously but didn’t say anything. Aziraphale felt heat rise in his cheeks. Suddenly ashamed, he let Crowley’s hand drop and followed him out into the neon light of the strip.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, I really failed to deliver on the "will update soon" promise. Whoops. Sorry y'all. I feel like this chapter drags a bit and I just couldn't get happy with it (hence the delay), but I am really excited for what's coming next. Chapter 7 is more than half written (and the part that's written is pure porn lol) so cross your fingers for a quick update! 
> 
> I did not go to Princeton and I have no idea what Eating Clubs really are like, but I have always gotten the impression they are like frats, but worse. 
> 
> In this fic, the lads are playing texas hold 'em, which is the only kind of poker yours truly knows how to play. 
> 
> Yes, I know this fic is super America-centric, but the heart wants what it wants and in this case, Princip's heart wants them to fuck in the desert (see above re: the next chapter is entirely porn). 
> 
> Thank you all for sticking with me on this crazy ride of multiple AUs in one story <3 <3 <3


	7. Two Types of Astronomers, Two Types of Classicists

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which we find out what Crowley does for a living and finally (finally!) GTFO of Vegas

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW for this chapter: Body image issues, homophobia. Rating for this chapter in terms of sex stuff is T, next one will be M.

“So, did you really lose a ceremonial what’s-it that your frat had kept for years and years and years?” Crowley asked, leaning back in his chair, loose and relaxed, glass of wine dangling between two fingers, as they waited for their food. 

“It was a drum and it was an eating club, not a frat,” Aziraphale said reflexively, taking a slow sip of his wine. Crowley had chosen the wine. It was an excellent vintage. “But I did rather. I mean, I actually gave it away.”

“You what!?” Crowley seemed genuinely surprised. 

“I gave it away.” Aziraphale dabbed at his lips with a napkin. “You see, I actually did some research and I found out that the drum we’d been using for years was actually an authentic artifact, made by a chief of the Piscataway tribe in the early 1800s probably...well I won’t bore you with the details, but I felt quite bad that we’d kept it for so long. It belonged in other hands. The archeology museum put me in touch with one of the local tribe elders and well...long story short I gave it away.” 

“And then you lied and said you lost it?” Crowley still looked incredulous. 

“Well, what else was I supposed to do? Gabriel would have probably tried to get it back otherwise.” 

Crowley was looking at him so intently that Aziraphale blushed and tried to change the subject. “Can I ask you a question then?” 

“Anything,” Crowley said easily.

“Right, well, I hope it’s not too personal, but why the sunglasses?” Aziraphale gestured at Crowley’s face where they still sat. “I thought maybe you were wearing them just for poker but is it something else?”

Crowley let out a short bark of a laugh. “Anyone who wears sunglasses for poker is trying too hard. No, no, I just get bad migraines. All the lights and stuff here are a big trigger.” He cocked his head to the side as if something had just occurred to him. “Actually, probably shouldn’t be having this wine either, but what my neurologist doesn’t know won’t hurt her.” Crowley tipped the glass back and finished it off in one gulp. Aziraphale tried unsuccessfully not to stare at his throat as he swallowed.

“If you don’t like Vegas, what brings you here?” Aziraphale asked. 

“Oh, I never said I don’t like it,” Crowley grinned. “I love it actually, all these people, making terrible decisions, even though they have every opportunity to walk away. Watching from the sidelines is fascinating, it’s like an examination of free will and a trip to the zoo all rolled into one. And sometimes people are surprising. You, for example.” 

“Me?” 

Crowley nodded. “Yeah, I sat down at your table thinking I knew exactly the kind of people I was playing against. Bachelor party, Ivy League and proud of it, rude about women, nasty about queers like me, douchbags all the way down. No offense,” Crowley added belatedly, not looking remotely sorry. “Thought it would be fun to wipe the floor with them. But then I saw you. And I knew right away you were different.” 

“Different how?” Aziraphale asked, dismayed despite himself that a stranger could take one look at him and know he didn’t belong. 

“Oh, don’t look like that,” Crowley said, “It’s not a bad thing! I looked at you, and I saw the expression on your face when the big handsome one of your friends, what’s his name?”

“Gabriel.”

“Yeah, when Gabriel was talking. I took one look at your expression and I said to myself, this one’s different. This one’s kind.”

“Oh,” Aziraphale said softly. “Gabriel once told me I was soft.” 

“Maybe you are,” Crowley said, suddenly fierce. “And maybe that’s not a bad thing at all.” 

The moment stretched until it was broken by the arrival of the appetizers. They were as delicious as the reviews had suggested. Aziraphale moaned happily around a mouthful of fresh watercress and seared tuna. A blush fluttered high on Crowley’s cheeks as he pushed his own plate of dumplings across the table to Aziraphale. “Here, try one.” 

Crowley watched him eat with rapt attention. The scrutiny should have bothered Aziraphale, but somehow it didn’t. When the entrees came, Crowley offered him bites off of his plate as well. It was all so delicious, the wine was so good, and through it all, Crowley was lovely company. After the conversation over appetizers, they steered clear of any talk of college. He asked about where Aziraphale was from, about how he enjoyed living in New York (nice, but sometimes a bit too busy). They were both professors, it turned out, Crowley in Astronomy at UCLA and Aziraphale in Classics at Columbia. Crowley listened, to all appearances, completely rapt, as Aziraphale told him about his current project re-translating the Iliad and the Odyssey for a modern audience. In turn, Crowley told Aziraphale wild stories about grad school, about a supervisor named Hastur who never appreciated Crowley’s more creative contributions, about all the best places to go for bubble tea and obscure performance art in LA. 

It was, by far, the best date Aziraphale had been on in years, although given his dating history that wasn’t saying much. In fact, it was probably the only good date Aziraphale had been on ever. 

“Desert?” Crowley asked, cocking an eyebrow at him. 

“Oh, I shouldn’t,” Aziraphale said, smoothing a hand down over his belly. 

“I think you should,” Crowley said. “If you want to that is. You enjoy things so much. It’s nice, watching you enjoy things.” 

Crowley’s cheeks flushed, and looking at that flush, Aziraphale agreed to a decadent green tea matcha ice cream. It came with two spoons. Aziraphale couldn’t stop his eyes from traveling to Crowley’s lips as they closed around the spoon, the hollow of his cheeks as he sucked. Crowley released the spoon with a smirk as if he noticed. 

Afterwards, Aziraphale didn’t want the night to end. Neither, apparently, did Crowley who suggested they see the fountains by the Bellagio. They wandered in that direction, the neon lights of the strip flickering overhead. It was properly dark now, around 9pm, and the strip was starting to come alive with crowds of people. Men in track suits and women in tight dresses. Aziraphale had almost forgotten about the bachelor party, was focused instead on trying to telegraph to Crowley that he would like to hold his hand. Every time Crowley came close, a crowd of people surged past and they separated again. 

“Crowley,” Aziraphale said, something just occurring to him, “you never did tell me why you’re in Vegas?”

“Oh, I’m here for a conference. Wait,” Crowley rummaged for a minute in the pocket of his jacket and pulled out a crumpled badge that read Anthony J. Crowley, PhD, University of California Los Angeles, American Astronomical Society. The text was barely readable over an image of outer space printed on the background. Crowley correctly interpreted the look on Aziraphale’s face because he smirked and said, “For a bunch of people who spend their lives coding computer models, and using billion dollar technology, professional astronomers are shit at graphic design.” 

“Programing?” Aziraphale asked politely. “I always thought astronomy was mostly going out at night and using telescopes and such.”

“Nahhh,” Crowley said, drawing out the word. “Well, we do use telescopes, but they’re mostly picking up like, radio waves, and infrared, and such and then transferring it to the computer, where we finally get to look at the data. It’s mostly math at the end of the day. Really, there are two kinds of astronomers in the world,” Crowley continued, “there are the ones who started out as mathematicians and ended up as astronomers by accident when they realized they wanted universe sized math problems, and then there are the ones who got kicked out of the house at sixteen when their parents found their gay porn stash, the ones who would stare up at the stars in order to fall asleep that entire awful year when they were crashing in their car in the desert, trying to hold down a job, finish high school, and apply to college, the ones who got so attached to the night sky that the first thing they did when they heard they had a free ride to Berkeley was to sign up for Astronomy 101. That’s the other kind.” 

Crowley had averted his eyes, not that Aziraphale would have been able to see them through the glasses anyway, and had drawn in upon himself, hands in his pockets, walking fast down the strip. 

“Oh Crowley,” Aziraphale said, and reached out as gently as he could to put a hand on Crowley’s elbow. They stopped walking. The crowd jostled them, parted around them. 

“Don’t,” Crowley said, but he didn’t pull away. “I don’t…” he broke off. “I never tell people that, I don’t even think about it anymore.” 

“I’m sorry.” 

“Don’t be,” Crowley said, voice gravelly. “If I hadn’t wanted to tell you, I wouldn’t have.” 

“Right, well,” Aziraphale said, trying to be brave. “There are two kinds of classicists too, I suppose. There are the ones who are just linguists really, interested in ancient languages, who sort of wandered into it, and then--” Aziraphale’s voice wavered. He hadn’t talked about this with anyone, certainly not his college friends. “And then there are the classicists who were absolutely miserable in high school, felt all sorts of things they weren’t supposed to feel, who stumbled across a copy of the Iliad in their senior year, when things were really, really bad, and read about Achilles and Patroclus and suddenly realized that there was a world in the past where they wouldn’t be so alone, and well, I guess they ran back into that past world as fast as they could as soon as they got to college.” Aziraphale’s face was burning. Aziraphale felt a hesitant brush against his elbow and looked down. Crowley had turned his arm and reversed Aziraphale’s touch from earlier. They stood there in the middle of the Vegas strip, forearms intertwined, clutching one another’s elbows like a pair of fools. 

“You know,” Crowley said, voice soft, “my PhD thesis was on a cluster of stars that are about 3,000 light years away. So just think, the light I was studying, the poems you were reading, it’s all about the same age. There’s more of that past world in this one than we realize, don’t you think?”

Aziraphale didn’t know what to say to that, he could only look up at Crowley’s face, where his eyes were still shrouded by the glasses. A group of drunks shouted something unintelligible behind them. Suddenly music blared, loud and staticky, as the fountains of the Bellagio flared to life across the strip. 

“Let’s get out of here,” Aziraphale whispered. 

“Yes,” Crowley squeezed his elbow. “Let’s.” 

….

Crowley led them back towards Caesars Palace. “My car’s still parked in their garage,” Crowley said. “Conference ended yesterday, I checked out this morning. Was meant to be driving back to LA already actually.” 

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Aziraphale said, crestfallen. 

“Don’t be,” Crowley laughed. His hand had migrated from Aziraphale’s elbow to the crook of his arm as they walked, and he squeezed gently. “This was way worth it.” 

“I just mean,” Aziraphale said, “it would have been nice to have more time.” 

“Well,” Crowley was looking at him, and his narrow chest inflated as he took a deep breath. “You could come back to LA with me?” he said in a rush. 

“I could?” Aziraphale asked. 

“Yeah, look...I know it’s crazy but, what if you switched your ticket back from Vegas to LAX? I was going to drive back through Death Valley National Park. Brought some camping stuff actually, we could stay there tonight, and tomorrow and then I could drop you at the airport on Sunday?” 

“I barely know you,” Aziraphale said. “I’m meant to be at a bachelor party this weekend.” 

“Yeaaaahh,” Crowley drew out the word grimacing. “Forget it, it was dumb,” he said, at the same time as Aziraphale said, “But, alright.” 

“What?” 

“I said alright...I...I want to go.” Aziraphale flushed, bit his lip. Crowley stared at him. 

“Ok,” Crowley said, eventually. “Fuck, yeah, let’s go then.” 

“I’ll just get my stuff from my room,” Aziraphale said, heart pounding in his chest. “Check out and all that. Meet you back here in the lobby.” 

“Ok,” Crowley said again. His hand left Aziraphale’s elbow and he stood at Aziraphale’s side uncertainty written all over his face and in the hunch of his shoulders. 

“I’m coming back,” Aziraphale said, “I promise.” And on impulse, he reached down and squeezed Crowley’s hand with both of his own. Crowley made a small noise in the back of his throat, a noise which Aziraphale filed away in his mind as one he should try to encourage again later. 

“20 minutes,” Crowley said. “Right.” 

“Right,” Aziraphale said, and headed for the elevator. 

….

This is crazy, Aziraphale thought as he repacked his barely unpacked bag. Absolutely fucking mad. He stepped into the bathroom, began to gather his toiletries, and then thought better of it, started stripping off his day old clothes, which he had worn on the plane over. 

I’ve gone insane, he thought in the shower, fumbling with the soap with nerveless fingers. “I’m showering because I think I’m about to have sex, with a stranger, in the desert,” he said aloud, “Because I want to have sex with a stranger in the desert.” It sounded even crazier when the words were out in the air. “We’re going to a park literally named Death Valley,” Aziraphale said aloud. “They will never find my body.” 

Aziraphale knew there were many things to worry about in this situation, but as he washed himself, all could think of was the way his belly rolled over his hips, the hair he had neglected to shave between his thighs. The last time Aziraphale had had sex with anything other than his hand was years ago. Did he even remember how? Yet something taught and wanting trembled in his belly. He sighed, smoothed a hand down his thigh, turned the water off. 

He took care selecting his underwear and undershirt, silly since they were all the same exact shade of white, but he made sure to put on the least raggedy ones. Looking himself over in the mirror, bow tie in hand, he debated a bit, but then decided, screw it, Crowley hadn’t been put off by him over dinner, he would be damned if he was going to try to change himself now. Aziraphale tied the bow tie on snuggly. 

Crowley was waiting for him in the lobby, checking his absurdly fancy watch, an anxious expression on his face. 

“I came back,” Aziraphale announced, breathless. 

Crowley sucked in a breath, tried and failed to hide the pleased smile which crinkled the corners of his eyes, visible at the edges of his sunglasses. “To the car then?” he asked and offered Aziraphale his arm. 

…

Crowley’s car was cool. Aziraphale supposed he should have expected it, but he still had a moment of unreality when he took in the fire engine red jeep convertible with California plates. He smoothed a hand over his vest again, adjusted his bow tie. In no way was Aziraphale cool enough to ride in this car.

“Nice, isn’t it?” Crowley smirked, misinterpreting Aziraphale’s gaze. “She off roads and everything. Bad for the environment, I know, but how else do you get to all the remote stargazing spots?”

Crowley took his luggage, lifted it gallantly into the trunk. Aziraphale settled himself gingerly into the passenger seat. The car was a stick shift, because of course it was. In the cup holder next to the gear shift sat an empty can of red bull, three more pairs of sunglasses, and a large bottle of Excedrin.

“Ready?” Crowley asked, settling next to him. He had taken off his sunglasses in the gloom of the parking garage, and they joined the others in the cupholder. He had lovely light brown eyes.

“Ready.” Aziraphale said.

Crowley nodded, but didn’t pull away yet. Instead he lifted one hand off the steering wheel, hovered it in the air between them. “Is this alright,” Crowley asked. And reached out, delicately, slowly, giving Aziraphale every chance to back away or say no, and settled his hand on Aziraphale’s thigh. He just rested it there, didn’t grab or stroke, but the simple warm presence of his palm made Aziraphale’s head swim.

“I don’t do this,” Aziraphale said suddenly, without meaning to, “I just want you to know, I never go for drives with strangers, or sit in their cars in the parking lot, or go with strangers at all really. I don’t do it.” 

Crowley looked around them at the dark garage beyond the windows, at the interior of the car. The corner of his mouth quirked up. “Certainly looks like that’s what you’re doing.” 

“I mean,” Aziraphale said, desperate for Crowley to understand. “For God’s sake, I don’t even have a grinder. I’m really not that kind of man at all.” 

Something in Crowley’s expression softened and the hand on Aziraphale’s thigh started to withdraw. Aziraphale grabbed blindly at his wrist, stopped the backward motion and pinned it in place. Crowley’s skin trembled a bit under his touch, almost as if he was as anxious as Aziraphale, which gave Aziraphale the confidence to say what he needed to say next. 

“Don’t stop,” Aziraphale said in a rush. “Please. It’s just. Go slow with me. Be gentle please. I don’t do this a lot. Or ever. I don’t do this ever.” 

In the dim light, Aziraphale saw Crowley’s throat move as he swallowed hard. 

“When you say ever--”

“I’ve had sex!” Aziraphale interjected, flushing. “Just not a lot of it, and never with strangers, and to be honest, it’s hardly ever been any good--” which oh dear, that was much more of an admission than Aziraphale had planned on making but he forged ahead anyway, determined now to get it all out in the open. “I want to, with you, and I want it to be good, but for that you’re going to have to listen and be patient and go slow.” 

“I’ll be patient, I’ll go slow. Fuck, whatever you need,” Crowley’s eyes gleamed in the darkness. “Whatever you need,” he murmured and Aziraphale believed him. 

Aziraphale always had trouble asking for what he wanted, in part because he hardly ever knew what he wanted, and in part because none of his prior lovers, and few of his friends for that matter, ever asked for his opinion. He had discovered long ago that he didn’t much care for topping. The sensations were so much more exquisite the other way around. But he also hated the surrender of control that had come with bottoming in his other, admittedly few, encounters. Hated the feeling of another body using him, rutting into him, expecting Aziraphale to bend and mold to their desires just because he was soft. 

But Aziraphale knew what he wanted now. Had known since the hot shock that ran through him at their moment of introduction. He let go of Crowley’s wrist and trailed his hand lower, to entwine with Crowley’s. 

“I want your fingers,” he whispered, shocked at his own boldness. “I want them. I want them inside me. I can’t stop thinking about it.” 

Crowley made a low sound next to him, and said, in a choked off voice, “Yes, yes,” then, “Aziraphale, can I kiss you? Is that allowed?” 

He was asking, really asking, hadn’t moved at all and Aziraphale knew he wouldn’t until given permission, and whatever lingering barriers Aziraphale had dissolved entirely. “Yes, Crowley dear,” he heard himself saying. “Yes, kiss me please.” 

No sooner were the words out, than Crowley surged over to meet him, lips warm and frantic against Aziraphale’s own. Aziraphale parted his lips, lifted his chin, cupped the back of Crowley’s neck and took control of the kiss. Crowley let him, practically melted against him in a way that sent a wave of heat through Aziraphale. He was so very pliant, so good, although Aziraphale thought if he tried to say anything of the sort, Crowley would bristle. He filed the comment away for later, then caught himself, thought what later? Surely, they would never see one another again after this wild ride of a bachelor party turned camping trip? 

Crowley broke away from the kiss with a low moan. “Aziraphale,” he said, “you’ve no idea how much I--” he couldn’t seem to finish the sentence. 

“Look,” Crowley said eventually, “I want to do the fingers thing, like, fuck you’ve no idea how much I want that, but I want to take my time with you. Let’s go, yeah? We’ll pick up what we need on the way, and get to the park, and do it properly. Let me…” he was flushing again, bright enough Aziraphale could see it in the dark car. “Let me take care of you properly, please, you’ve no idea how much I want to.”

“Yes,” Aziraphale said, breathless, clutching at Crowley’s long fingers. “Yes, that would be lovely.” 

Reluctantly, Crowley tore himself away, resettled himself on the driver’s side. Aziraphale, shocked at his own boldness, released Crowley’s fingers and settled his hand high on Crowley’s thigh. He was rewarded by the same “ngk” noise as before. 

“Aziraphale,” Crowley said, very seriously, “you better buckle up, because if you keep your hand there, you can’t expect me to drive slowly.”

“As long as we get there in one piece—” Aziraphale started to say, and then was grabbing at the dashboard with his other hand as they sped off towards the garage exit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I believe that Crowley's Bentley, were it ever to be reincarnated as an American car, would be a fire red trail capable jeep with a convertable top and california plates. You cannot convince me otherwise. 
> 
> The best (only good) part about Vegas is how close it is to all the national parks out west. I have been to Vegas like seven times and each time, stayed for exactly 1 all you can eat buffet, 1 game of black jack, and then fucked off the desert. I don't know why/how it took me more than 5000 words (between last chapter and this one) to get our heros there. 
> 
> Once upon a time I ran an astronomy club in college and was disappointed to learn that most modern astronomy is math rather than moodily gazing at the night skies and thinking about existence while blasting classical music. 
> 
> Sorry what was meant to me one chapter got split into two, and all the porn is in the next chapter. But, on the plus side, get excited for desert fucking on the next update!


	8. Stargazing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Porn (with feelings!) in the desert. Delivered as requested. 
> 
> Alternatively, our heros go to a national park and see none of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for taking so long to get this chapter up! 
> 
> It is my rock hard conviction that every incarnation of Crowley has a massive praise kink and I make no apologies. 
> 
> CW: anal sex, very light D/s

On the way out of Vegas, they had stopped at a CVS and Crowley had run inside, come back with seven (seven!) different bottles of lube, all different brands. “Didn’t know what kind you liked,” Crowley said, sounding sheepish and uncertain for the first time. 

“Thought you’d already have some in the car,” Aziraphale replied. 

“Well,” Crowley looked like he was blushing, although it was hard to tell in the neon light that filtered in from outside. “Maybe I don’t do this as often as you think, either.” 

Then they had driven out into the desert. The rational part of Aziraphale’s brain had been screaming at him about unmarked graves and how long it would take to find a body, but the more practical part was occupied with sorting through the various lube options. He discarded three that promised to have some kind of numbing agent, considering that the point was to feel what was going on, and another that was labeled--he snorted--”his and hers.” 

They drove for minutes that stretched into hours, the only light, the light of the Jeep’s headlights on the road ahead. 

“Do you believe in God?” Crowley asked abruptly, shocking Aziraphale out of his reverie. 

“Do I...what kind of a question is that?”

“I don’t know,” next to him, Crowley shrugged. “Desert brings out something kind of existential in me, I guess. Was just curious.” 

“I don’t know,” Aziraphale said slowly, “I definitely used to. Maybe I still do. Not in a church sense though, if you know what I mean.” 

“I do know what you mean,” Crowley laughed quietly, then grew serious. “Fuck the church.” 

They were silent for long enough that Aziraphale thought the conversation might be over.

“I don’t really,” Crowley said apropos of nothing. “Was kind of religious as a kid. But then I started questioning everything, never really stopped. Don’t see how God could be in any of the answers.”

“I don’t see how it matters,” Aziraphale said. “Just have to live the best you can, whether there is a God or isn’t. I think it’s comforting to imagine there is though.” 

“Comforting,” Crowley snorted. “Tell that to everyone who’s had bad things happen to them for no good reason.” 

“If there is a God,” Aziraphale ventured, “he definitely works in mysterious ways. You kind of have to believe it is ineffable, to believe at all.” 

“Hmm.” Crowley said, quiet again for a while. “I think you were right though.” 

“What?” 

“Have to imagine Sisyphus happy I guess.”

“Hmm?” Aziraphale asked, feeling he had rather lost the thread of where this was going. 

“If you have to live your life with God being indifferent or nonexistent, might as well just try to make your own sense of things, live the best life you can, given the circumstances. Try to be the best you can.”

“Yes,” Aziraphale said, considering, “I think that’s a good way to put it.”

They were mostly silent after that. It should have been awkward, Aziraphale thought, it absolutely should have been awkward, sitting in the dark with a total stranger not saying anything, but somehow it wasn’t. At some point, they turned off the main road onto a gravel track. 

At the top of a wide mesa, Crowley pulled the car to the side of the road and put it in park. “We’re here,” he said softly, against the pinging of the car engine as it cooled off. Aziraphale looked up and looked around. Here was nowhere. Literally. The desert stretched for miles around. It was perfectly dark. When Aziraphale opened the door of the car, it was perfectly silent as well. The air was cool, but heat rose up from the sand and rock around them. Aziraphale could feel Crowley’s eyes on him even without turning to look. 

“Where are we exactly?” he asked. 

“Backcountry campsite on the edge of the park,” Crowley said. He had come out of the car too, and was standing next to Aziraphale, a dark silhouette against the sky. “This is one of my favorite stargazing spots. Pretty close to LA. I drive out here sometimes on the weekends. Look, you can see the entire milky way,” his shadow pointed. 

Indeed, Aziraphale could see it, stretching in a wide band across the sky. “It’s beautiful,” he breathed, and he could see the white flash of Crowley’s smile, open and unguarded beside him. 

“I’ve never brought anyone here before,” Crowley said, and wrapped a tentative arm around Aziraphale’s middle. Aziraphale stiffened a bit, “too soft” echoing in his mind, but then relaxed into Crowley’s loose embrace. Crowley didn’t have to pretend to like him, he reminded himself, Crowley was under no social obligation, but he brought him here anyway. 

“I find that hard to believe,” Aziraphale said. He knew he was fishing, but he couldn’t help it. “You’re so….” Aziraphale’s hand came up of its own accord and rested on Crowley’s taught abdomen. He could feel the subtle shift of muscles as Crowley breathed. “Anyone would be lucky to have you,” Aziraphale finished. 

Crowley made a soft, noncommittal noise in the back of his throat. “I haven’t wanted to bring anyone else here,” Crowley said softly. “This is like, my private thing.”

“I…” Aziraphale said, turning his face up to Crowley’s. “Thank you.” And then, because words didn’t seem fully adequate, he leaned up and kissed Crowley again. He intended the kiss to be sweet, chaste even, but the way Crowley’s mouth yielded to his was too great a temptation. He crowded Crowley against the car, licked into him, and Crowley moaned and whimpered around his tongue. Aziraphale pulled away, suddenly overcome with the sensation, with the idea that all this time he had been worried about Crowley murdering him and leaving his body in the desert, but it was actually Aziraphale who had to the power to wound, who was being given something precious and needed to tread carefully to avoid stomping on it accidentally. 

“So,” Crowley said shakily against his lips, “decide on which lube you wanted then?” 

“Oh!” Aziraphale rummaged in the passenger seat of the car, picked one of the three varieties he hadn’t discarded at random and pushed the bottle into Crowley’s hand. Crowley peered at the label in the starlight and a wide grin spread across his face. 

“Aziraphale, this one’s flavored. Are you trying to ask for something?” 

“Oh, er,” Aziraphale wrung his hands because, no, he hadn’t been, but now the image was in his mind of not only Crowley’s fingers, but also his tongue pressed up against, into-- “Er, only if you’re amenable, that is,” he managed. 

“Very.” Crowley said, his voice deeper than it had been before. “Very amenable. Now let’s get you situated.”

And then, in short order and not quite sure how it had happened, Aziraphale was lying on his back on a fluffy black comforter, produced from the recesses of Crowley’s car, shirt open, pants off, legs spread wide, two of Crowley’s fingers teasing him open while the man himself loomed over him, breathless and looking almost as undone as Aziraphale felt. 

“How is it?” Crowley asked, and if it weren’t for the way his voice broke at the end, Aziraphale would think he was fishing for compliments. “How is it, tell me how it is, please.” 

“It’s so good, Crowley,” Aziraphale said, “It’s so good,” and then Crowley did something, a little twist and thrust, that made Aziraphale’s eyes close, that made him let out a moan he didn’t intend. “Yes, please,” he whispered, reaching down to guide Crowley’s wrist. “Just like that, a little deeper.” 

Crowley did as requested, moving his fingers again and again against that same spot. Aziraphale gasped as the pleasure built. “You can add another finger, he said, “more lube, then another finger, shallow first, just play--ah--play with the rim, tease a little.” The pads of Crowley’s fingers stroked, wickedly obedient. “Fuck,” Aziraphale said, and Crowley shuddered with the use of the word. “Fuck, you can put them in properly now. Please do that. Slow, deep.” 

“Anything,” Crowley gasped, sounding absolutely wrecked. “Command me, I’ll do anything.” 

“Your mouth,” Aziraphale said, suddenly needing it. “Please.” 

Crowley moaned, and then pushed Aziraphale’s thighs even further up, and he was there, licking between them, his tongue circling the tight muscle even as his fingers stretched him wider. 

“Fuck,” Aziraphale swore, and grabbed at Crowley’s hair. Aziraphale’s pleasure felt like it stretched for miles, like not even all the desert was large enough to contain it. He looked up at the expanse of sky as Crowley’s fingers slid into him, slow, deep, just as he liked it, as Crowley’s tongue circled and lapped at his hole when the fingers withdrew, and felt so expansively well fucked and loved (where had that thought come from?) that he would almost believe it if Crowley told him he had hung the stars there just for him. Dimly, he was aware of Crowley, still maddeningly clothed, rutting against the ground between his legs, moaning against Aziraphale’s skin. I did that, Aziraphale thought, just from allowing him inside me like this, he’s coming apart for me, this beautiful creature, and then Aziraphale himself was coming, suddenly, unexpectedly, without a single touch to his cock. It felt like it went on and on. 

Crowley withdrew his fingers gently, wiped them discretely on the blanket beside him, and crawled up next to Aziraphale. Even in the darkness, Aziraphale could see that his pupils were blown wide. He’s going to ask to fuck me now, Aziraphale thought with disappointment, because he never really enjoyed that part, the bluntness of a dick inside him, especially after he had already come. I’ll have to let him, Aziraphale thought, and was already steeling his body for it, when Crowley leaned in close to his ear, gasped, “Will you touch me please?”

“Oh,” Aziraphale said, startled, “of course.” 

He reached out. Crowley’s flies were already open, his dick hard and leaking. It jumped as Aziraphale closed his hand around it. Crowley fell onto his back, jaw tight, eyes screwed shut. “I’m fucking close,” he hissed. “Just...tell me…” 

“Crowley dear,” Aziraphale said, looking carefully down into his face. “You were so wonderful, that was exactly what I needed.” Aziraphale moved his hand experimentally. 

“Like that,” Crowley gasped, “just a little tighter.” 

Aziraphale changed his grip and Crowley arched into him. “So perfect,” Aziraphale found himself saying, “so good.” Crowley let out a choked moan and came all over Aziraphale’s hand in hot spurts. 

Later, when their breathing had slowed, they lay next to one another on the comforter staring up at the sky. 

“Fuck,” Crowley said eventually. “Fuck that was so good. I knew it would be fantastic with you.” 

“Yes,” Aziraphale said musingly. “And we didn’t even have sex.” 

Crowley sat up and gaped down at him. “What?” he said, “That was literally some of the best sex of my life just now. I think you were there for it.” 

“Well, I mean...” Aziraphale said, sitting up too and reaching for his pants. “You didn’t put your dick in me at all.” 

Crowley gaped at him some more. “I got the impression you didn’t want me to, which was fine, more than fine actually, but wait, hold on--” he broke off. “Who the hell told you it didn’t count as sex if no one’s dick went in anyone’s ass?”

“Well,” Aziraphale said, wrongfooted, “Anyone else I’ve ever slept with I guess.” 

“They were all idiots,” Crowley said fervently. “It’s perfectly fine to not like anal sex, it’s perfectly fine to like it some of the time but not all the time. For me, for instance, it’s nice, yeah, but I always come harder from other things. Like this” he gestured between them. “In case it escaped your notice, this was really fucking good for me Aziraphale, I’m already hoping we get to do it again.” 

“Oh,” Aziraphale’s cheeks felt warm. He heard everything Crowley had said, but that last part stuck out as especially important. “Me too, er…” He looked Crowley up and down, as much as he could in the dark. “Look, I know I live in New York and you live in LA, but I really like you.” 

“Me too,” Crowley said tightly. 

“Right,” Aziraphale said, then stopped. He didn’t know how to proceed from here. How did one go about asking their cross country one night stand into a long distance relationship? 

Next to him, Crowley sighed, and the blanket rustled as he stood, leaving Aziraphale’s words hanging in the air. Aziraphale heard the car door open and Crowley moving about in the dark. When he came back, it was with a box of wipes and another fluffy down comforter. 

“Didn’t want you to be sticky,” Crowley said, “or cold.” 

“Thanks,” Aziraphale said, accepting the change of topic for what it was. 

They settled back into the blanket. Crowley lay curled away from him, but their legs tangled under the blanket. Aziraphale tipped forward a bit, let his own body curl around the arc of Crowley’s spine, waiting for any sign that he was going to pull away. Instead, Crowley shifted, leaned his back into Aziraphale’s front, reached back for Aziraphale’s hand and laced their fingers together. 

“Do you want me to tell you about some of these constellations?” Crowley asked. 

“Please,” Aziraphale whispered. 

They shifted, so they were lying on their backs, sides pressed up against one another. The air was cold on Aziraphale’s face, but he was perfectly warm underneath the second blanket Crowley had brought out. He watched the long shadow that was Crowley’s arm as he pointed out star system after star system. Aziraphale had not thought about God in a long time, but perhaps the conversation in the car had gotten to him in ways he hadn’t expected. As he drifted off to sleep, still listening to Crowley narrate the heavens, he found himself thanking God for bringing him here, to this, for allowing him to trust and take a chance just this once. 

****

The sunlight came to the mountains first. It fell in their faces while the valley below them was still full of blue shadows. Aziraphale chanced a glance at Crowley next to him and was transfixed by what he saw, by the open, relaxed expression on his sleeping face, by the way the sun lit up his brilliant red hair. There, half asleep, enchanted by the morning light, Aziraphale felt a deep certainty welling up inside him, a certainty he had never felt before. In that moment he knew that this man, this stranger, was meant for Aziraphale and Aziraphale was meant for him, and even though they had just met and even though they lived on opposite coasts, and even though they were so very different people. They would not be parted. Nonsensically, although they had just met, Aziraphale knew that they had been fighting to be together for years, decades, eons even, and that now nothing could keep them apart. Pleased, exuberant, and filled with lightness and clarity, Aziraphale turned over, pulled the blanked up over his face, and went back to sleep. 

When he woke again, Crowley was standing, fully dressed by a small camp stove, sipping from a thermos. 

“Morning,” Aziraphale said, voice gravely from sleep. He felt unaccountably happy, although he could not quite remember why. 

“There’s coffee if you want some,” Crowley said. “Or tea? I’ve only got Earl Grey though.” 

“Earl Grey would be lovely,” Aziraphale said. He stretched, and a pleasant ache, unfamiliar after all these years, made itself known between his thighs. “Mm,” he said, sitting up and wrapping his hands around the identical thermos Crowley was reaching out to offer him. “I feel quite well fucked this morning, dear.” 

Crowley was turned away from Aziraphale, minding the stove. “Well,” he said, ears turning pink, “you know, I try.” Even without seeing him, Aziraphale could hear the pleased smirk in his voice. 

***

They had packed up quickly, driven down into the valley proper. They went to the National Park visitor center, because Aziraphale had never been to Death Valley before and Crowley insisted he would like it. They watched the informational video on the park’s geology, toured the little museum, even went for a short hike with a ranger and all the while, Aziraphale couldn’t help but think about last night, about Crowley’s sighs against his mouth, about Crowley’s fingers in his—-. And his lips and his tongue. And Aziraphale’s hands curling around—-. 

It was hard to forget it. If Aziraphale felt well fucked, Crowley looked it. His hair was still mussed from where Aziraphale had pulled on it. His lips were still swollen and red from the work they had done, from the places they had been. He smelled of sex, not enough, Aziraphale thought, for anyone else to notice, but when he came up behind Aziraphale bent over an exhibit, leaned in close, and Aziraphale took a deep breath—- 

Aziraphale felt distractingly different too. He could still feel the lube slick and wet inside him, still feel himself loose and ready. It would be so easy this time around, he thought as Crowley leaned over him to peer at an old mining pickaxe, none of the patient preparation of last time. Crowley could have him just like this, one word from Aziraphale and he could have Crowley pressed up against him, three fingers deep in an instant. Crowley’s hands and tongue had made Aziraphale’s body ready and wanting. He couldn’t stop thinking about how full he had been. Aziraphale wanted to take and to take and take some more. 

“Did you like it?” Crowley asked when they were back in the car after the ranger hike. His sunglasses were back on in deference to the brightness, which was a shame because Aziraphale couldn’t stop fantasizing about his eyes, peering down at him as he asked, “how is it?” so very earnestly. Crowley was wearing tight cut off shorts and a sleeveless tank top that hung tantalizingly loose over his narrow frame in deference to the heat of the valley. Aziraphale wanted to eat him. 

“Yes,” Aziraphale said. “I enjoyed it. But I admit, I’m a bit distracted.” 

“Thank God,” Crowley blew out a breath. “Me too, I can’t stop thinking about—-”

“I know,” Aziraphale cut him off. 

“Yeah,” Crowley said. “Hotel?”

“Please,” Aziraphale moaned. 

***

The motel was weather-beaten, old enough to still have metal keys rather than electronic locks. Aziraphale was on Crowley as soon as he had fumbled open the door. 

“I want you inside of me again,” Aziraphale gasped into Crowley’s mouth. “I can’t stop thinking about it.” And then, because he had an idea now of what Crowley was like, Aziraphale slid a hand into Crowley’s already sex tousled hair and pulled none too gently. Crowley let out an inarticulate noise and dropped to his knees there in the entryway, fumbling immediately for Aziraphale’s flies. 

“Fuck,” Crowley was chanting quietly, almost to himself, “fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.” Then his mouth was full, and he didn’t say anything. 

Aziraphale thrust into that wet heat. Crowley was indescribably good at this too. It felt amazing, but it wasn’t what Aziraphale wanted. Not now at any rate, his hole clenching around nothing, begging to be filled. Aziraphale pulled Crowley off of him, and started walking to the bed, shedding clothes as he went. Crowley was close behind him, sunglasses, tank top, and cut off shorts joining Aziraphale’s clothes on the floor. 

They fell onto the blue motel comforter, already reaching for one another, kissing messily. Aziraphale’s teeth scraped Crowley’s bottom lip unintentionally and he moaned loud and wanton, so Aziraphale did it again. They rolled so that Aziraphale was on top. Crowley shivered beneath his weight. Aziraphale tangled his hand with one of Crowley’s, stroked his narrow, nimble fingers. There was something there, Aziraphale realized, in the short hiss of breath Crowley let out as Aziraphale pushed his hand further into the mattress, in the bitten off moan as Aziraphale, experimentally, bore down with his hips, pinning Crowley in place. Slowly, deliberately, Aziraphale gathered both of Crowley’s wrists in one hand, and pushed them to the bed above his head. 

“Oh,” Crowley said softly, his eyes going unfocused. 

“Yes?” Aziraphale asked. 

“Yeah,” Crowley said. “um...a bit, yeah. More than a bit really.”

“That’s ok,” Aziraphale said. He realized as he said it that it was true, more than true. Aziraphale had always been a bit ashamed by his need for control. “Topping from the bottom,” a date years ago had said scornfully. Now, looking at the way Crowley had melted into the mattress beneath him, Aziraphale’s head spun. 

“What do you need?” Aziraphale asked. Crowley opened his mouth to protest. “What do you want?” Aziraphale corrected himself.

“This,” Crowley said, hands still pinned under Aziraphale’s. “This is...really good.” He swallowed. “You could, um, you could tell me what to do. Tell me how to...please you.” Aziraphale could see how hard it had been for him to get the words out, felt a curl of warmth spread through him distinct from the haze of arousal which filled his brain. Crowley had trusted him enough to tell him this. Aziraphale was not going to misplace that trust.

“Good,” Aziraphale said, leaning down to kiss him. Crowley arched up against him, trembling when the resistance of Aziraphale's weight on his wrists didn’t budge. “Very good.” Aziraphale nipped at his lips. “It’s good when you tell me what you want.” 

Crowley moaned shakily, and his legs spread so that Aziraphale could nestle between them. 

“And if you want me to stop?” Aziraphale asked. 

“I’ll just say stop,” Crowley said. “It’s not that complicated for me.” 

“What else do you want,” Aziraphale asked, gently as possible. “Is pain—”

“No,” Crowley shook his head. “I mean, maybe a little, if you want it to hurt, if you want to be rough with me, put me in my place when I need it…” he trailed off. “But that’s not the point. The point is for it to be good for you.” 

“You are good for me,” Aziraphale murmured into the space between them, still holding him down. “So good for me Crowley.” 

“Ah,” Crowley said. “Fair warning, if we do it like this, I...um...might need some stuff after.” 

“What kind of stuff,” Aziraphale asked. Crowley looked like he wanted to sink into the bed and then into the ground beneath it. He looked anywhere but Aziraphale’s eyes. “Crowley?” Aziraphale prompted. 

“Might need you to hold me,” Crowley muttered, “you know, after. Touch my hair, stuff like that.” 

“Oh Crowley,” Aziraphale sighed, “of course, for as long as you want.” Aziraphale leaned down and kissed him again, long and slow and deep. When he pulled back, he could feel Crowley’s thighs trembling faintly against his. 

“Did you bring condoms?” Aziraphale asked. 

“I...yeah. They’re in the bag by the windowsill.” Crowley’s brow furrowed. “But you don’t? You don’t want?”

“What I want is up to me,” Aziraphale said. Then, feeling bold and hoping that he was playing this right, he drifted one hand down to cover Crowley’s cock just as hard and elegant as he remembered it from the night before. “Your job is just to fill me with whatever I want, when I want it.” Aziraphale squeezed slightly. 

Crowley’s head fell back on the mattress. “Oh fuck,” he breathed. 

“Indeed,” Aziraphale said, breathless himself. “Now stay exactly as you are and wait for me to come back. Aziraphale got off of Crowley’s lap and walked with shaking legs to the windowsill where a few minutes of rummaging brought out a whole pack of condoms and the lube from the night before. When he got back to the bed, Crowley was lying still as a statue exactly as he had been left, cock jutting up from his belly. 

“Good,” Aziraphale said, running a hand down Crowley’s side experimentally, watching him shake at the touch.

Aziraphale ran one finger up Crowley’s dick, which twitched and leaked just a little. He gathered up the wetness with the pad of one finger, massaging it over the head. “Oh,” Crowley moaned, but he still didn’t move. 

“Very good,” Aziraphale said breathlessly. “Oh Crowley, very, very good.” 

Aziraphale climbed back on the bed next to him, made a loose circle with his fist and began gently stroking. “In the museum, I was thinking about this,” Aziraphale said, watching Crowley’s face closely. “I was thinking about how wet I still was for you, how loose. How you could just put your fingers back in me if you wanted, no need to go slow. I could take all three of them right now, here, I’ll show you.” 

Aziraphale reached out and grabbed one of Crowley’s hands, brought it to his lips, sucked until wetness dripped down Crowley’s fingers and onto Aziraphale’s own hand. “Put them inside me,” Aziraphale said, breathless and knowing he was being demanding, and knowing also that it was turning Crowley on. “Put them inside me now, I need it.” 

“Lube?” Crowley gasped, also breathless. 

“No need. I want you to fill me now, just like this” Aziraphale heard himself saying, barely believing this was his own voice. Crowley’s fingers in his mouth had kindled something burning and desperate in him to match the desperate way Crowley yearned to do what he asked. Crowley fumbled behind him, then was sliding his fingers in, all three of them, blunt pressure but no pain. They went readily. Aziraphale and Crowley both gasped at the same time, at the slickness of it, the ease of it. Crowley began, awkwardly because of the angle, to move his hand. 

“Oh fuck,” Crowley said, sounding absolutely wrecked. “Oh fuck.” His cock was dripping steadily, smearing Aziraphale’s belly, puddling between them, mingling with the wetness on Aziraphale’s own dick. Aziraphale ground his hips back onto Crowley’s fingers, savoring the sharp focus of the feeling inside him. It felt wonderful, but Aziraphale was consumed by a desire to have Crowley, to be filed by him, in all possible ways. Shakily, he groped on the bed, found what he needed, and tore open the condom wrapper with trembling hands. Crowley’s eyes widened beneath him. 

“I want something,” Aziraphale gasped. “I wanted it in the museum. I thought if you could get your fingers in so easily—” at that Crowley twisted them in just the right way and Aziraphale nearly swore— “If you could get them in so easily, you could put your dick in me too, just slide it in. I could—” Aziraphale’s voice hitched. “I could sit on your cock, fuck you like this until you come just from being inside me.” 

“Jesus.” Crowley said, low urgent. “Aziraphale, you’re going to fucking murder me.” 

“No,” Aziraphale said, “I am going to use you. I am going to fuck myself on your dick until you can’t stand it, and then I’m going to fuck your face until I’ve had my fill.” 

Crowley moaned as if in pain and Aziraphale had a moment of worry. “Was that an OK thing to say?”

“It’s perfect, it’s fucking perfect, Aziraphale.” Crowley looked up and there were tears hanging at the corner of his eyes. “Anything you want, please, do what you want to me, have me how you want.” 

“This is how I want to have you,” Aziraphale said, and suddenly nervous, determined to do it before he lost this boldness, he rolled the condom down over Crowley’s cock. He pulled away from those wonderful fingers, straddled him, then sank down in one smooth move. 

Crowley let out a long, hissed “oh.” but held still, head tipped back, breathing rapidly through his nose. Cautiously, Aziraphale rocked a bit, tried to find the right angle. It was no use. Crowley’s dick, though lovely, felt blunt and smooth, with none of the focused pressure Aziraphale knew he needed to come from this alone. The stretch, though, the slide of it as he moved up and down, was wonderful. Even better was the way Crowley arched into him, gasping, trying to hold still, fingers fluttering and grasping at the sheets where his hands stayed obediently above his head. Aziraphale rolled his hips. Crowley cried out, so he did it again. And again. 

“Not going to last, fuck” Crowley bit off, the words swallowed in another moan. Aziraphale didn’t let up. He ground down hard against Crowley, lifted himself up, slammed back down. On one hard thrust down, Crowley’s hips rose to meet his. 

“Crowley,” Aziraphale admonished breathlessly, secretly thrilled at being able to shatter Crowley’s control. 

“Sorry, sorry,” Crowley gasped beneath him, but two thrusts later he did it again. 

“If you can’t behave,” Aziraphale said, and felt a shiver run through all of Crowley’s body, “I’ll have to hold you down.” 

“Oh please, please,” Crowley was practically sobbing beneath him. A wave of tenderness rose up inside Aziraphale. 

“You only had to ask,” he said softly, and shifted his weight, one hand splayed across Crowley’s narrow belly, the other curling up against his throat, not pressing, just there. 

“Oh fuck,” Crowley gasped, I’m going to”

“Do it,” Aziraphale said firmly, and closed his hand just a fraction, not nearly enough to be dangerous, around Crowley’s long neck. Crowley started to come instantaneously. Aziraphale could feel it happening inside him, feel Crowley’s cock pulse and then gradually grow soft. Through it all, Aziraphale petted Crowley’s hair gently, permitted it when his hands came up to cling to Aziraphale’s sides. 

“So good,” Aziraphale murmured, “so good.” 

Crowley’s spent cock slipped from his body. He immediately felt empty, aching again for something missing. Aziraphale shifted on the bed, crawled up so he was hovering over Crowley’s face. He felt selfish, asking for this now so soon after Crowley had come, but Crowley had wanted this, and God, Aziraphale needed--- 

“Can I?” Crowley asked, lips hovering over Aziraphale’s cock. 

“Of course,” Aziraphale whispered, guiding it in, almost gently, back into to that welcoming heat. “And,” Aziraphale’s breath hitched. “And your fingers, please.” 

Crowley pulled his mouth away. “Anything,” he said wetly. “You don’t even have to ask, just take it, it’s yours.” So Aziraphale did, guiding Crowley’s clever hand back where he wanted it so desperately. Crowley’s mouth settled on Aziraphale’s cock again, sucking and gently nuzzling. Aziraphale felt static rushing through his head. The sensation of Crowley’s mouth, pliant and soft, his fingers stroking obediently inside of him, his painstaking deference to what Aziraphale needed. There was a thing buzzing around Aziraphale’s head, a word he caught himself thinking, and then thought, what? That’s absurd, we’ve only just met, and then he was lost to the wet heat and smooth glide of it and barely had time to warn Crowley before he was coming down his throat. 

Crowley swallowed it down with a satisfied, lazy smile. Aziraphale bent to kiss him, heart unbearably full of something he did not yet dare name. 

They lay twined together until late afternoon. Aziraphale true to his word, petting Crowley’s hair, holding him tight, until some of the looseness of Crowley’s limbs started to fade and he seemed to come back to himself. 

“That was excellent,” Crowley said, rolling over. “Truly excellent.” 

“I didn’t know I was capable of that to be honest,” Aziraphale said. 

“You did wonderfully,” Crowley snuggled up to him again. “You’re ok though, right?”

“More than ok,” Aziraphale assured him.

“Me too,” Crowley whispered into Aziraphale’s chest. 

***

The next day, they left Death Valley and headed to LA. It was Sunday, and Aziraphale’s rescheduled flight was at 6pm that night. They had fucked that morning, slow and gentle, using nothing but their hands to bring each other off. They kissed the whole time through, neither willing to pull away, perhaps, Aziraphale thought, because they were each worried about what the other would say, or would not say, into the scant gap between them. 

They stopped at Racetrack Playa on the way. Looking at nothing but that vast expanse of salt and mud only served to make Aziraphale more miserable. Crowley, inscrutable as ever behind the sunglasses, only stood a few feet away and stared out over the valley, not saying anything either. Soon it was time to get back in the car and start driving again. Still, they were silent. 

“As soon as we have cell service, I ought to check in to my flight,” Aziraphale said, hoping he didn’t sound quite as wretched as he felt. 

“Mmhm,” Crowley said, still staring out at the long flat road ahead. 

“Oh, look, here we go!” They had just cleared the top of a mountain range and Aziraphale’s phone buzzed to life with texts and emails from the past 48 hours. “Oh my,” he murmured, scrolling through. 

“What?” Crowley asked.

“Never did tell Gabriel and the others that I was leaving….”

“Oh…” The car swerved as Crowley leaned over curiously. 

Aziraphale swatted him away. “Eyes on the road! Thirteen texts from Gabriel! I think that’s twice as many times as he has EVER texted me. There’s even one from Sandalphon! And a missed call from Michael” 

“What do they say,” Crowley asked, something dangerous in his tone. 

“Where are you?” Aziraphale read. “Headed to the Pussycats strip club, and an address. Then, ‘where are you’ again, this time with three question marks, the next one is from yesterday, ‘where the fuck are you, is this some fucking joke, we prepaid the buffet for 13 people.’ That last one was Sandalphon of course.”

Crowley snorted, but there was still something brittle in the white knuckled way he held the wheel. 

“Then this one is from Gabriel…” Aziraphale trailed off. “Oh, I’m not invited to the wedding anymore.” Aziraphale laughed, then looked over at Crowley who was not laughing at all. 

“I’m sorry,” Crowley said, not looking at Aziraphale, looking at the road. “I’m so, so sorry.” 

“Don’t be absurd,” Aziraphale said, “what for?” 

Now Crowley turned to him, gaping. “Isn’t it obvious?” Crowley swallowed, “I projected all my bitterness and baggage about my awful college friends onto you and your friends, I convinced you to leave them all for a ridiculous, meaningless, lark in the desert with a stranger, and now I’ve utterly destroyed your friendships.” 

“I…” Now Aziraphale was too shocked to speak. “Crowley, they were awful. They weren’t my friends, not in college, not now and I’ve always known that and just put up with it. You just convinced me to finally take a stand, I should be thanking you, you shouldn’t be apologizing and wait, what meaningless—?”

“See, this is what I didn’t want to have to talk about,” Crowley said, jaw clenched tight. 

“I think we have to talk about it,” Aziraphale said firmly. 

“Or, I don’t know, we could just….” Crowley trailed off, then sighed. “Fine. Talk,” he grited out. 

“It wasn’t…” Aziraphale felt his eyes fill with tears. Oh bother, he thought. Serves me right for getting attached so ridiculously quickly. “It wasn’t meaningless for me. Just so you know.” 

“You don’t mean that,” Crowley said flatly. “You said it yourself, you live in New York, I live in LA. What could you possibly want from this that could be in some way meaningful? Honestly, I was happy to be your midlife crisis fling. I thought it would be fun. I just didn’t plan on falling completely head over heels in—-” 

“Finish that sentence,” Aziraphale said, never wanting to hear something more in his life. 

“I don’t think I can,” Crowley said, raising one hand off the wheel to wipe furiously at his eyes under his sunglasses. 

“You can,” Aziraphale insisted. “Finish it, please.”

“Fuck, I—-” the car swerved and screeched to a halt as Crowley abruptly pulled off to the side of the empty highway and slammed on the breaks. Crowley had torn off the sunglasses and was pressing the heels of both hands into his eyes. “I...fuck...this is insane, Aziraphale.” 

“It is,” Aziraphale said, unsure how he was remaining so calm despite everything. “I still want to hear it though, if it’s alright with you.”

Crowley took his hands down from his eyes, stared Aziraphale full in the face. All around them, the desert was silent. There were no other cars. Purple wildflowers had begun to bloom in patches on the rocky hillside behind the drivers’ side window. Aziraphale focused on these flowers, because he found he couldn’t look at Crowley right now. Couldn’t look at the intensity of the raw thing that hung about his mouth and eyes and in all the lines of his face. 

“I love you Aziraphale,” Crowley said, and let out a whoosh of breath like the sigh of the wind. “I love you. I don’t know how or why. I don’t know how it’s even possible, so quickly like this. But I do. If you say you want me to just drop you at the airport and have that be the last of it, I will. But I just—” his voice broke and Aziraphale chanced a glance at his eyes, earnest, overflowing, and almost yellow in the desert light. Crowley cleared his throat, continued. “But I just want you to know that if maybe, possibly, someday, you think you could feel the same, I would do anything to be with you.” 

“Oh, Crowley,” Aziraphale said softly. “Crowley you must know, it’s not just you.” 

“It’s not?” Crowley looked as if he wished he could keep that little tremor of hope out of his voice. Aziraphale wanted to kiss him to keep it there. 

“It’s not. How could it only be you, when it’s so strange and sudden like this. Of course, I feel it too. It’s…” he cast around for words. “It’s ineffable, Crowley, I don’t think we’re meant to understand, but we’re meant to be in it together. I’m sure of that. And I’m sure that I—-” 

Aziraphale hesitated. He hadn’t said these words in more than twenty years, and he wasn’t even positive he’d meant them the one other time he’d said them. But he felt sure, deep in his bones, that he meant them now.

“I love you, Crowley,” he said simply. Aziraphale leaned forward to meet Crowley’s speechless lips in a kiss, but as he pressed forward, a strange fog descended all around. Crowley’s lips against his were warm and solid until they weren’t, until nothing was solid at all, and everything melted into air.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you all enjoyed this chapter! Hopefully the next one will be up a bit sooner. Only two real chapters left, then an epilogue. Thanks for sticking with me on this wild ride! Comments are always lovely, either here on tumblr. 
> 
> This is [racetrack playa](https://www.nps.gov/deva/planyourvisit/the-racetrack.htm) by the way. It's a pretty cool place generally speaking, and (I would imagine) an absolutely fantastic place to have an existential crisis about falling in love in 48 hours.


	9. The Very First Day(s) of the Rest of Their Lives, Part II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> *Slaps roof of this fic* "This bad boy can fit so many human AUs"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A lot of angst, I'm sorry y'all, but this about as heavy as it gets. 
> 
> CW: Some fade to black style sex in this chapter, but nothing super risque.

Aziraphale made the train with only seconds to spare. All the compartments were full, except for one at the very end of the car in which a slim man dressed all in black sat absorbed in his phone screen. 

“Mind if I join you?” Aziraphale asked, lugging his large bag into the compartment after him, still a bit out of breath from running to make the train. 

“Suit yourself,” the man said, barely glancing up. 

****

“The prosecution rests, your honor.” 

Aziraphale groaned softly to herself. It had been a good closing argument. And Crowley was always so dramatic. The jury was going to eat it up, like they always did. 

Crowley was waiting for her outside the courtroom. He easily fell into step with her as she brushed passed him on her way to the parking lot. 

“Nice work today,” she said grudgingly, as it became clear he wasn’t going to leave. 

“Yes, well,” he said, waving a hand. “Your client was guilty as hell. You built the best case you could, but there was no way you were going to win. Especially not with that douchbag Gabriel messing up the order of the evidence.” 

“Crowley,” Aziraphale admonished, looking around hurriedly as she unlocked the door to her car. But it was already night, and there was no one around. “You know he’s a senior public defender. You can’t say things like that. I’ll never get promoted. I’ll never get promoted if they knew I’d so much as spoken to someone from the DA’s office, let alone knew about our…” she looked around again, lowered her voice. “Acquaintance.” 

“Acquaintance! That’s what you call it!?” 

Aziraphale didn’t dignify that with an answer, only opened the door to her car and drove off, leaving him standing there in the parking lot. But later that night, he had his revenge. 

“Oh, harder, my acquaintance,” he gasped out as she rode him. “It feels so good inside you, my acquaintance.” 

Much later, they lay still next to one another, but for Crowley’s hand, absently stroking Aziraphale’s short shorn curls. “I’ve thought of another thing to call it,” Aziraphale said suddenly, heart pounding. 

“Oh?” Crowley’s voice sated, drowsy, close by, and very, very dear.” 

“Yes, lov---” 

The world went white. 

****  
The beat of the club shook the floor. Despairing, Aziraphale wondered why on earth he had agreed to come here, and also why he had believed anyone would want to go on a date with him in the first place. He ran his hands down his rounded middle despairingly. It had been too good to be true when a sleek silver fox with an oxford degree and a fancy job in marketing had messaged him late last night asking to meet up. Aziraphale turned to leave the bar. 

“Not even going to buy a drink?” said a voice at his ear. 

A man with red hair, strange eyes, and alarmingly skinny hips was drinking at the bar alone. 

“I think I’m headed home actually,” Aziraphale said, voice thick with misery. 

“Stood up?”

Aziraphale couldn’t bear to nod. 

“Sit down,” the man said, “have a drink with me instead.” And he grinned a Cheshire cat grin that was almost all bravado, but with a kindness peeking through in a guarded way as if the owner of the smile didn’t want it to show. 

***

They first kissed in the heat of the summer, just a quick press of lips against lips as they bobbed next to one another in the pool. 

Aziraphale said it that winter. He pulled Crowley close as the snow fell all around them, whispered it into his hair. 

The snow was white around them. Then it was whiter still and the world dissolved. 

***

The heat was out again in Aziraphale’s apartment. That wasn’t really a surprise, after all, she had barely had enough money to eat and pay rent, let alone utilities. It had happened before. The problem this time, though, was winter. She wrapped herself in a blanket and called the only person she knew she could count on. 

“Well, then,” Crowley said, a gust of snow and wind following her in the door. “We’ll just have to improvise.” 

Aziraphale smiled weakly. Crowley had grown up poor, she knew what to do in situations like this, not like Aziraphale, bloody useless after her mom had kicked her out. Crowley was flash and beautiful and confident and hadn’t abandoned Aziraphale, not even after--

“Ah ha!” Crowley shouted, gesturing towards the stove where a fire burned merrily under one of the burners. “Suckers turned off the electric, but not the gas. We’ll get it warm in here in a second.” She bustled about, filling pots with water, placing them on the stove to boil. 

Crowley wore glossy lip color that she stole from big box stores and doc martins. Crowley had a mean sense of humor and smoked cigarettes sometimes because she liked the look of it even though she hated the taste. Crowley didn’t read books (except for some of Chaucer, and all of Shakespeare and Tony Morrison, who was her favorite, and Flannery O’Connor and Dostoevsky--but only that one translation, that husband and wife couple, none of that Constance Garnett shit--and also that one summer she spent obsessed with Sartre and Arendt). Crowley had had a revolving string of boyfriends since the 6th grade. Crowley had been on a date with one of them when Aziraphale had called. She had come anyway. 

Aziraphale shivered under the blanket. “Crowley,” she said. 

“Hmm?” Crowley turned to her, and was so beautiful, silhouetted in the darkness against the flame licking under the pots on the stove. It felt like the flame was licking Aziraphale, just under the ribs. 

“Crowley, would you come here?” 

“‘Course”

“I’m still cold,” Aziraphale said, “will you--?”

“Yeah,” Crowley said, big eyes gleaming in the low light. And she curled up next to her under the blanket, soft, small tits pressing against Aziraphale’s side. 

“Crowley, will you?” Aziraphale said eventually when the water had half boiled down from the pots. 

“Yeah,” Crowley said, “yeah,” and brought her lips hesitantly to the shell of Aziraphale’s ear, to Aziraphale’s warm throat, leaving a lipstick stain there (I won’t ever wash it off, Aziraphale thought wildly, I’ll get it tattooed as soon as I have the money, I’ll leave it there forever--) and then Crowley’s lips found her lips, they were kissing properly, and Aziraphale forgot about everything else. 

“Crowley,” Aziraphale said, when the water in the pots was nearly gone and the room was quite warm, from the stove, but not only from that. “Crowley, I love--” 

And white mist rushed in to fill the room. 

****

Crowley lay stretched like a serpent on the grass, beautiful and peaceful in the dappled sunlight. 

“I love you,” Aziraphale said helplessly, and the world dissolved around them. 

****

The boat rocked and shuddered as another wave came up and crashed over the bow. In the little cabin, Aziraphale poured over the navigational charts, and fiddled with the radio. There was only static. He ducked into the engine room, paled at what he saw. 

Aziraphale clipped his harness onto the ships rail and he ventured out onto the streaming deck. “Crowley,” he called, “Crowley it’s no use.” 

Out in the darkness, a shape that could have been Crowley spit out seawater. Another wave crashed over them both, threw Aziraphale against the hatch and then threw Crowley, all hard elbows and long arms into his side. 

“Of course, there’s a use,” Crowley hissed, grabbing at him as the hull lifted up and slammed into another wave. “Aziraphale, we’ll make it out of this, we have to, we’re going to---” 

“The engine room’s half full of water already,” Aziraphale yelled back, “Crowley, I--” 

“Then why the fuck aren’t you down there pumping, hand siphoning, anything---” 

“Crowley, I have to say this, just this once, for God’s sake, listen to me--” 

“Angel, we’re going to live, we’re going to sail away from this mess, don’t---” 

“Crowley, I--” 

“You don’t need to say it, don’t do this, not like a goodbye--” 

“This might be my only chance. Don’t you want to hear it?” 

Crowley’s eye’s peered up at him in the dark. The hiss of his “yes” nearly lost in the roar of the wind. 

“Crowley, I love you--” And Aziraphale’s mouth was filling with saltwater and then mist, lots of mist, and he thought, as they dissolved together, not a bad way to go, not a bad way at all---

****

“Invite me inside,” Crowley said, leaning against the doorjamb of Aziraphale’s hotel room. 

****

“Fuck this shit.” 

“Crowley, if you keep talking like that, you’re going to get us fired!” Aziraphale whispered.

“So what, this is a shit job anyway.” 

“We need this job, remember, I’m trying to move out and your mum already kicked you out so--”

“Yeah, yeah,” Crowley blew a lock of red hair out of her face in exasperation. “I know, but damn have you ever seen anything so foul as this grease trap”

“I don’t like it either,” Aziraphale said, “but remember the plan. We’re going to save up. We’re going to rent a place where we can love each other properly.” 

“Wait, you---” Crowley had stopped scrubbing, and it took Aziraphale an embarrassingly long moment before she realized why. 

“Crowley,” she breathed out, “Of course I love you; didn’t you know?” Aziraphale only got a half glance of Crowley’s face, wide eyed, mouth open, but spreading into a grin of pure joy as she processed the admission before the world was whiting out around them. 

****

It slipped out unexpectedly. 

They were at the mall, looking at the depressing nearly shuttered department store, considering buying a couch together. 

They were eating cheesy fries at 2am in a burger king parking lot. 

It was a Tuesday in March and they were watching shit TV, aimlessly flicking through channels. 

The world dissolved, and dissolved, and dissolved. 

****

When Aziraphale’s wife had died, shamefully his first thought had been not for her, but for the children. After the first few nannies had quit abruptly or run away screaming, he feared he wouldn’t be able to get anyone who could manage them. Quite suddenly, however, an application came in from a former nun. Ms. Crowley certainly didn’t look like someone who had been in a convent, dressed as she was so severely, all in black, but of the highest quality fabrics and most modern fashion. Then again, Aziraphale supposed he didn’t much look like he should be in the Navy either, so appearances could certainly be deceiving. 

“Are you sure you can handle them?” he asked Crowley. “You know there are seven of them.”

“Quite sure,” Crowley said, firmly. And that was that.

But the matter wasn’t finished at all. Quite unexpectedly, they were dancing together and Aziraphale was swaying, looking deep into Crowley’s unusual eyes, and he felt something rise up in him, even though he was already engaged to be married to another high society lady and Crowley hadn’t even given up the convent officially---

And then later, they were alone again, and Aziraphale could feel Crowley yearning towards him, was powerless to stop himself from yearning back. “Crowley,” he whispered into the scant space between them. “Crowley, I love you.” 

“I lov--” Crowley started to say back, then as the mist came in her head whipped around and a pained look came into her eyes as she took in their surroundings. “Oh no, you’ve got to be kidding me. Aziraphale you look lovely in a Navy uniform, but, really, The Sound of--” And then white fog had swallowed them both up and Aziraphale knew no more. 

****  
Once, Aziraphale said it for the first time, not to Crowley, but to Crowley’s parents, accidentally and completely inappropriately, after he and Crowley had a string of one night stands that turned into a week of glorious fucking. 

“Let’s get this one,” Aziraphale said, picking up a tin of refrigerated cinnamon biscuit dough in the dairy aisle of a Tescos. He was still riding high on the fact that Crowley had asked him to stay for breakfast this time, didn’t notice the tense silence in the aisle behind him. 

“Aziraphale,” Crowley said, gritting his teeth, clearly not expecting this reunion, “Mum, dad. Mum, dad, Aziraphale.” 

“Oh,” Aziraphale said, gripping Crowley’s mother’s hand with both of his own, “oh, I love your son so very much.” 

Crowley’s father dropped the carton of eggs he was holding.

The world went white around them. 

****

Crowley was standing outside with a large cardboard sign. Aziraphale pressed her hand to her lips, looked back into the house behind her. 

“To me you are perfect,” the first sign read. 

Crowley flipped through them all. Aziraphale read them in tears. 

“Invite me inside,” the last sign read. 

****

“Oh fuck,” Aziraphale said, stroking Crowley’s hair, Crowley’s face, the sharp jut of their cheekbones. The world felt so clear around him, the skies so vast, the stars so bright, the sweet smell of peyote rising all around them. Aziraphale hadn’t met Crowley until this evening, just moments ago, right before they passed the pipe and said, “try some,” with such a winning smile that Aziraphale had only hesitated a moment. “I’m told it’s traditional,” Crowley had said with a smirk, and it was that smirk more than the rationale which drove Aziraphale to close his lips around the pipe. 

Aziraphale had never met Crowley before. It would even be accurate to say he had never met anyone like Crowley before. Crowley was glamorous in their tight leather pants and sequined jacket, out of place here where all Aziraphale ever saw was hand me down Carhartt. Crowley was otherworldly with their gender-neutral pronouns and big city swagger. Crowley looked a vision. Under the influence of the peyote, Aziraphale felt suddenly that they had great black wings stretching behind them, blotting out the night sky. It should have been scary, but instead it was comforting. Aziraphale tried to twist his head behind him to see if he had wings too, but then decided it didn’t matter. Crowley’s skin was so soft, Aziraphale couldn’t stop touching it. “I think I know you,” he said. “This is crazy, but I really think I know you. I think I love you. I think I’ve loved you for a very long time.” 

And maybe it was the peyote, or maybe it was divine intervention, but time seemed to hang suspended for a minute that lasted an eternity. 

“I know,” Crowley huffed out against his lips, “Don’t you think I know. Right now, I remember every time you’ve said it, I remember every body you’ve been in, I’ve been in. But I can’t figure out how to say it back without waking up somewhere else, without forgetting you again, Aziraphale, I--” 

And Crowley looked so distressed that Aziraphale placed warm fingers over their lips. “Hush love, we can do this for eternity if we have to, we’ll get it right in the end.” 

Crowley was crying, warm tears spilling down onto Aziraphale’s fingers. “I love you,” Crowley said, kissing the fingers softly, as white mist came rushing in. When Aziraphale woke up, he was forty years older, and on a different continent, and late for work, and he didn’t stop to wonder why his pillow was inexplicably wet with tears. 

****  
It came out when they were fighting once. 

“You’re ridiculous, this is ridiculous,” Crowley hissed out. 

“God, I know,” Aziraphale groaned, “if only I didn’t love you so much--” 

The mist came swirling in. 

***

It came out intentionally, deliberately. Sometimes Aziraphale’s voice barely shook at all. 

“Crowley, I love you,” he said on his knees in the grass, holding out a small box in front of him. “Will you--”

And Crowley’s face, so very dear, wet with tears, dissolved into mist. 

****

Aziraphale opened his eyes on a spacecraft orbiting the moon, the earth rising in the distance as Crowley shook him awake. 

****  
Aziraphale woke up in a villa in Argentina. 

“I love you,” Aziraphale said, a fortnight later, into the curve of Crowley’s throat, “I love you, I love you, I love yo--”

****

Aziraphale woke up in a tent under the interstate in South Africa. 

Aziraphale woke up in a high rise apartment building in Hong Kong.

Aziraphale woke up on the beach in Samoa. 

****

Aziraphale woke up in a Khrushchyovka on the outskirts of Moscow. 

A year later, drunk on vodka, he kissed Crowley in the crumbling concrete stairwell.  
Crowley’s hands moved restlessly on his ribs. 

“Invite me inside,” Crowley said. 

“Yes.” 

****

“Invite me inside,” Crowley said, somewhere in Australia. Aziraphale worried his lip between his teeth and opened the door. 

****

“Invite me inside?” Crowley asked, hands in her pockets, unsure, nervous. 

“My dear,” Aziraphale whispered, ushering her in. “My dear.” 

****

“Invite me inside,” Crowley said. 

“I love you,” Aziraphale said. 

The world dissolved in mist. 

****

The first day of the new school year dawned bright and crisp in Tadfield. Aziraphale woke early and hummed all the way on her walk to the school. She was in the midst of arranging the pens on her desk and pulling her copy of Hamlet, tattered and marked up with notes out of her bag, when a long, lanky shadow darkened her doorway. 

“Ah, so they’re letting you teach the play then,” Crowley said, a smirk hovering around her eyes. 

“Oh, yes,” Aziraphale said, hoping she wasn’t blushing terribly. “Thanks ever so much for your intervention after the staff meeting.” 

“Nonsense,” Crowley said, ambling into the classroom, bumping Aziraphale’s desk with her hip. “It was nothing really, just a little conversation.” 

“Yes, well,” Aziraphale straightened the pens again, even though they didn’t really need it, brushed a hand over the cover of Hamlet. “It was really helpful, having you speak to the chair, you know, in your official capacity as school psychologist. I think he really listened when you gave him that article on neuroscience and pedagogy.” 

Crowley sucked in a breath, and Aziraphale swore she could see fleeting color rise on the other woman’s cheeks. “Ah, well,” she waved a hand dismissively. “You know it bothers me when teachers at this school underestimate the kids. Honestly, Hamlet is not too much for 13 year old’s to understand. Although I don’t know why you want to teach it. The funny ones are better anyway.” 

“Well, thank you all the same.” 

They stood staring at each other, too long, far too long. Aziraphale felt she should say something to cut through the familiar tension that had arisen between them, the tension which coiled deep in her belly, which would spring if she let it. The tension which had built with slow anticipation all the long summer. 

“Looking forward to the year?” Aziraphale asked at the same time as Crowley blurted out “You know I would do anything for you.” 

“What?” Aziraphale said. Crowley’s eyes widened and she clapped a hand over her mouth. 

“What?” came another voice, this time from the hallway. 

Aziraphale and Crowley both whipped around. Standing in the doorway was a gangly boy with a mop of brown hair. With a sudden, unpleasant jolt, Aziraphale recognized him from the Year 8 English teacher’s horror stories as Adam Young. 

“Oh, no,” Adam said. “Not again, really guys?” 

“Adam,” Aziraphale said, trying to remain calm. It wasn’t like the boy had actually heard anything had he? And technically, there were no rules at the school about teachers --what was the word--fraternizing with one another. “Adam, now isn’t a great time, and class doesn’t start for another 15 minutes.” 

Aziraphale’s words seemed to snap Crowley out of it somewhat. “Adam Young, early for class on the first day of school!” she breathed out. “Never thought I would see the day. Is the world ending?”

“No,” Adam said, with a smile that seemed like a private joke somehow. “It’s not.” 

“Look, Aziraphale said, “could you wait in the hall for a moment please?” 

“I told you,” Adam said, as if he hadn’t heard Aziraphale. “It’s not right. How many times do I have to tell you?” 

“What?” Aziraphale repeated. 

“Being in other bodies, it’s not right,” Adam shrugged. “I’m just a boy now, I’m trying not to be anything special anymore. You’ve got to stop making me fix you.” 

Aziraphale gaped at him.

Adam sighed dramatically and lifted the finger and thumb of his left hand. “Pay attention,” he said, gesturing at Crowley, “I learned this one from you.”

Aziraphale chanced a quick glance at Crowley, but she looked just as mystified as Aziraphale felt. 

“Listen, boy--” Crowley started to say, and then Adam snapped his fingers and the world went black.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If it helps, just think of this chapter as any one of the absolutely brilliant montage scenes from The Good Place, but especially [this one.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4mff2neUNU) [spoilers for TGP, obviously]
> 
> Once, when I was poor and living in a part of the USA that's so far north it's practically Canada, my landlord tried to make us pay extra to turn on the heat in the winter. My roommate and I lived for weeks on the boil water on the stove/turn the oven on trick for warmth. It works, but it is fucking dangerous. This fic is not an endorsement of the strategy. 
> 
> If you've been reading this fic and sticking with it, thank you! It has been so lovely to get all your comments & I am so excited to hear what you think of this chapter! The next one is almost all written, can't wait to come full circle and see what Aziraphale has learned from this experience...


	10. The Last First Day of the Rest of Their Lives, Part 6001

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The chapter otherwise known as, “in which they have to Talk About It,” capital letters and all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW for extreme sappiness and also a lot of celestial sex. The sex is all after the cut that looks like ++++ so if you don’t want E rated smut with feelings, skip that bit. You’ll still understand the story

Aziraphale awoke with his face stuck to Shakespeare’s Sonnet 29 and the sunlight streaming through the back windows of his shop. How odd, he thought, stretching and yawning. It had been nearly a hundred years since the last time he had slept, and he had never done it by accident. Perhaps the Apocalypse had really caught up to him. Such odd dreams too, he didn’t remember that part from the last time he tried sleep. So many detailed human lives and Crowley had been in all of them-- 

Aziraphale sat bolt upright, suddenly very awake. Crowley! He remembered now, with horrifying clarity, the last conversation they had had before he bid Crowley goodnight, the warmth in Crowley’s expression as he leaned in, whispered “invite me inside, angel..” and then the agony, the way he had hissed out, “you cannot doubt how I feel.”

Aziraphale moaned softly and put his head in his hands. He was as confused as ever about the dreams, if they even were dreams and not, as he suspected with growing conviction, something else ethereal, occult, or otherwise ineffable. But one thing was very clear. He had been a total and complete ass. Not just last night, but for the better part of six thousand years. 

“Golly,” Aziraphale said to himself, reaching for the telephone on instinct. Then he withdrew his hand, suddenly doubtful. Would Crowley even want to talk to him after yesterday’s fiasco? What had he said as he was leaving? Aziraphale thought back over his memories of the past 24 hours, a process of sifting that was harder than it should have been, crowded as his mind was with thousands of lives lived in the interim. Finally, with a hand that only barely trembled, Aziraphale reached out for the phone again, dialed in a number that was familiar and dear after so many years of use. 

“This is Anthony Crowley; you know what to do…” the machine started. 

“Crowley,” Aziraphale said softly. “Crowley, I know you’re there, please pick up. Crowley, I’ve figured it out.” 

***

An hour later, they were sitting side by side in St James Park. Crowley had a bag of frozen peas and was throwing them at the water with far more violence than perhaps was necessary. The ducks didn’t seem to mind. 

“You too, huh?” he said. It was the first thing he had said since they sat down, since his terse reply to Aziraphale on the phone. “The usual spot. Eleven O’clock.” 

“The dreams?” Aziraphale asked. “Yes.” 

“Not normal dreams,” Crowley said. “Some kind of phenomenon. Phenomena? I figured that out pretty quick, but then kept forgetting each time it reset. Must have been thousands of times.” 

Aziraphale swallowed. “Actually, around six thousand, I think. I, um, did some counting before we met up.” Aziraphale pulled a sheet of paper from his overcoat. It was not, technically, just one sheet of paper in the same way that he had not, technically, had enough time in the 20 odd minutes between his phone call with Crowley and walking to the park to remember and record all the various scenarios they had been through. 

Aziraphale could see the barest flicker of movement through the sunglasses as Crowley’s eyes scanned the document more rapidly than any human's could. He snorted and jabbed with a finger. “It only took you three minutes in this one, angel.” 

“Yes, well,” Aziraphale said with mock affront, and secret growing relief as Crowley’s frosty demeanor melted a bit. “If you’ll look at 2031, it took 20 years in that one.” 

“Three months on average though,” Crowley said, still reading. “Oh.” 

Aziraphale grimaced. “You got to the one with the tentacles?”

“Yeah.” 

“I’m sure that was an aberration, even for….whatever this was.” 

Crowley snorted again. “For my money, the live action “Sound of Music” role play was worse though.” 

He straightened and Aziraphale could actually see it, could see the moment when Crowley began to pack whatever it was, he was feeling back inside himself, could see the glib comment forming on his lips as he reached out to hand the paper back to Aziraphale. 

“Bit of a wild ride, mystery why we can share dreams now. Maybe related to the--” Crowley glanced around them, lowered his voice, “strategy we took to avoid hellfire and holy water. I’m sorry angel, I didn’t mean for my...thoughts about you to get in your head while you slept. Guess if you want to sleep, you should just warn me next time and I’ll be sure to stay awake to avoid...you know. Well,” he started to stand. “Sorry, to bother you with this. I’ll just be...temptations to, you know, tempt and all...” 

“Crowley, wait,” In desperation, Aziraphale grabbed at Crowley’s sleeve. The demon stared down at him, one eyebrow raised above the rim of his glasses. 

Aziraphale swallowed. He could see how this might go, time forking for a moment in front of him into two distinct possibilities, both flickering faintly in front of his myriad of hidden eyes. He could see himself letting go of Crowley’s sleeve, standing up too, laughing it all off and then suggesting lunch. Crowley would say yes, he thought. Or maybe he wouldn’t. Maybe he would go home and sulk for the next few decades or so, but eventually, they would find themselves back here again, at the park or eating at the Ritz, or drinking in Aziraphale’s back room. Eventually, they would brush off this whirlwind of a night as if nothing had happened, would both forget, or pretend to have forgotten, about the desperate way Crowley had said “you cannot doubt how I feel.” Life would go on, as it had gone on, for another six thousand years or more.

Or there was another way ahead for them. There was a world where Aziraphale did not release his grip on Crowley’s sleeve. There was a world where Aziraphale slid his hand down from Crowley’s sleeve to intertwine with Crowley’s slim, clever fingers. Aziraphale didn’t know what happened in that world. Didn’t know where that would leave them in another six thousand years, or even in another ten minutes. Not a single one of Aziraphale’s many eyes could see where that road might end. 

Aziraphale swallowed and his hand trembled on Crowley’s very fashionable jacket. 

“Crowley,” Aziraphale said slowly, “Crowley I think I might have done it. The dreams I mean. I think they might have been my fault. I need to explain. I think we have to talk about it.” 

“What’s there to talk about?” Crowley said. His voice was affecting its usual nonchalance, but Aziraphale studied his face, which always gave too much away. There was something complicated and sad happening on his high cheekbones and in the furrow of his brow. Aziraphale wished simultaneously that Crowley would take off his sunglass and also was desperately glad he couldn’t see Crowley’s eyes. 

“Is there something to talk about?” Crowley said, softer now, different inflection, still not sitting, but also not pulling away. 

“Yes,” Aziraphale said simply and he let his hand slide down Crowley’s sleeve so that just the pinky finger, the one that still bore his ring with the heraldic crest of heaven, curled ever so softly into Crowley’s palm. Aziraphale could not make his hand move further. He had stopped breathing even. Crowley’s palm was so very warm and soft against the very tip of his finger. He shivered with it; they both did. It was ridiculous. They had touched before, to swap bodies even, an act so intimate that it bore as much resemblance to this one as Everest did to rolling countryside hills. But the intentionality was different. The last time, they had been trying to save their own skins, desperate and willing to do anything. There was no reason for Aziraphale to let his finger rest in the cradle of Crowley’s palm. There was no reason for Crowley to slowly curl his hand shut until the tops of his fingers brushed the back of Aziraphale’s knuckles. No reason, except of course, six thousand years’ worth of reasons, and the memories of six thousand human lives.

Crowley sat back down. 

***

“So, let me get this straight,” Crowley was saying a few minutes later, but Aziraphale could barely pay attention to the words, distracted by the bright line of feeling where Crowley still gently held his little finger. “You--an actual angel--prayed to the--” Crowley’s eyebrows gestured up at the sky. “Made a very specific sort of prayer. With great enthusiasm. And somehow didn’t plan for what would happen if it was answered?” 

Aziraphale nodded miserably. “If it helps, I was a bit drunk,” he added. 

“It does not help!” Crowley exclaimed emphatically. “Aziraphale this is worse than Adam messing around. How many collections of fairy tales do you have around the bookshop that talk about what a bad idea it is to actually get what you wish for.” 

Aziraphale’s eyes filled with tears. “Oh, Crowley, he whispered, was it really so bad?”

“Wellllll,” Crowley dug the toes of his pointed boots in the dirt, dragged out the end of the word. “It was...it wasn’t so bad really. Not bad at all. You said...every blessed time, you said...that you…” He couldn’t seem to finish the sentence. 

“Crowley,” Aziraphale said again, tremulously, “why didn’t you ask me earlier. Why didn’t you ask me before?” 

“Aziraphale.” Crowley tilted his sunglasses down with the hand not gripping Aziraphale’s finger so that Aziraphale could see his eyes, which were serious and sad, but not reproachful. “Aziraphale, I’ve been asking for nearly two thousand years, give or take.” 

“I…” Aziraphale said. 

“I thought you knew,” Crowley whispered, hand tightening almost imperceptibly around Aziraphale’s little finger. “I thought you knew, in 1969 at least. We definitely weren’t talking about my driving.” 

“Crowley,” Aziraphale said softly. “I didn’t let myself know. You know what I was like. I couldn’t speak about it in any way that wasn’t picnics or dinners or convoluted metaphors about your car.” Aziraphale let out a small sob, pressed the hand not holding Crowley’s to his mouth, trying to hold back a flood of tears. Wordlessly, Crowley passed him a black handkerchief, miracled together out of nothing, which Aziraphale pressed to his eyes. It smelled of Crowley. Cinnamon and brimstone and apples. The smell alone made Aziraphale’s tears fall harder. 

“And now?” Crowley asked, when Aziraphale’s tears had subsided a bit. He asked it so gently, but there was something raw and trembling and sad in his voice that sounded just like “anywhere you want to go” and “can’t you?” when Aziraphale wouldn’t invite him inside. 

After last night, Aziraphale thought he was done with praying, but he supposed once more couldn’t hurt. Thank you, Aziraphale prayed silently but fervently to The Almighty. Thank you for giving me another chance at this, another chance that matters, after the six thousand trial runs you gave me. 

Aziraphale took a deep breath, tried to calm his uselessly human racing heart, and said thickly around his tears. “I think we should be together, well, properly.” Aziraphale took a breath, at the same time as Crowley inhaled sharply, still inscrutable behind his dark glasses. “If you’d still have me,” Aziraphale said, suddenly unsure. 

“Worth the risk?” Crowley asked, in that same gentle tone that threatened to break Aziraphale into a million pieces. Aziraphale saw that he was genuinely asking. He remembered with a jolt the conversation that had only been yesterday, actually, although it felt like so very long ago. What a fool Aziraphale had been. What a fool to think not saying the words made it any less of a risk, and how cruel of him to decide for both of them that silence was better. 

“Oh, my dear,” Aziraphale breathed out, found he could move his hand again, and slid his fingers between Crowley’s, which trembled slightly in his grasp. “Absolutely. Yes. I was silly to think it wouldn’t be. But you know, I’ve already been taking the risk, for years and years and I just didn’t want to put a name to it.”

“And just to be clear the risk we’re talking about is…” Crowley said, studying their joined hands. There was something in the forced casualness of his tone, the determined, defensive set of his shoulders that caused an answering thing deep in Aziraphale’s belly to bloom and grow warm and aching inside him. 

“Loving you, of course,” Aziraphale said, barely able to get the words out around the ache which had now spread to his throat. “Unavoidably, inconveniently, desperately, terribly, in every possible way, and then some that the humans and The Almighty haven’t dreamed up yet.”

“Oh,” Crowley said, as if it was punched out of him, then tensed as if awaiting a blow, crushing Aziraphale’s hand in his own. Aziraphale drew in a breath, closed his eyes, opened them again. The sun was still shining. The sky was blue and clear. There was no sign of a white mist anywhere. Aziraphale extracted his fingers from Crowley’s white knuckled grip and turned on the bench to angle towards Crowley, placed his hands on Crowley’s slim hips which were reassuringly solid and warm. 

“Oh, thank someone,” Crowley breathed out.

“I love you,” Aziraphale said again, experimentally, rubbing his thumbs in soothing circles on Crowley’s narrow waist. The world continued to exist, so Aziraphale said it again. And again. 

Crowley let out a sound like a wounded animal and reached for him clumsily. Aziraphale folded his slim form into an embrace. Crowley shook against him. Aziraphale was trembling too. He tried to say something, but the knot still hadn’t loosened in his throat. He could barely speak around it. He carded his fingers through Crowley’s hair instead, holding him close until he felt Crowley’s breathing slow, until the tight set of his shoulders eased a little. 

“All those human lives,” Crowley said eventually into Aziraphale’s chest. “They felt so fragile, so fleeting, even when I was living them. It made things easy somehow. With you, here, now--” Crowley reached out blindly, put his fingers trembling and warm over Aziraphale’s hands again. “I don’t...I don’t know how to begin.” 

“I think,” Aziraphale said, pulling away from the embrace a little and turning his fingers up to lace through Crowley’s. “I think, I think...we just begin.” 

Slowly, with a shaky exhale, Crowley raised their joined hands, rested them against the wool of Aziraphale’s waistcoat, right above the place where his heart felt like it was about to beat out of his chest. 

“Oh, my dear,” Aziraphale breathed out. “I would very much like to kiss you, that is, if you--”

Crowley had lost his glasses somewhere in the fervor of their embrace. His eyes, which had gone completely yellow, closed briefly. “Pleasssse,” he hissed out. “Please.” 

So Aziraphale did. He bent and brushed his lips, a little dry and trembling, against Crowley’s. Crowley let out a small sound, a whoosh of breath and a plaintive noise. His hand curled in Aziraphale’s waistcoat almost painfully. His lips pressed hard and warm against Aziraphale’s own. It lasted maybe seconds, but it felt longer. Aziraphale pulled back a fraction, and Crowley made a sound of dismay, followed him, slotted their lips together again with a kind of desperation that made Aziraphale sure his heart actually was leaving his corporation via his ribcage. 

“Oh, Crowley,” Aziraphale said, tearing away again, unable to stop the words from bubbling out, and there was no reason to stop them now anyway. “Crowley, you’ve no idea how terribly I love you.” 

They breathed each other’s air for a moment. “In case it wasn’t clear,” Crowley said, “I love you too, you daft, bastard of an Angel.” And then Crowley’s lips were on his again, before he could say a word, and Crowley’s mouth was opening to his, and Aziraphale couldn’t imagine anything more heavenly than this. 

++++

Crowley’s lips trailed down his neck, leaving what felt like sparks in their wake. 

“You’re sure, angel?” Crowley asked for what must have been the hundredth time since they had entered the bookshop, warm golden eyes looking up to meet his own. 

“Yes,” Aziraphale said. “My dear, I don’t think I’ve ever been more sure of anything.” 

“It’s just,” Crowley hesitated again, toying with the open collar of Aziraphale’s shirt, knuckles brushing against Aziraphale’s throat in a way that was incredibly distracting. “It’s just...I’d hate for you to think I was going too fast.” The “again,” left unsaid but implied, lay heavy in the air. 

“My dear,” Aziraphale whispered, leaning in to kiss him again. Crowley’s mouth opened so readily, so sweetly to his, that Aziraphale had to pull back to avoid being swept away in the heavy, intense rush of it. “My dear,” he said again, “after six thousand years, and six thousand human lives, I think we’ve rather earned it. I think you deserve this. You deserve to be loved properly.” Crowley gave a full body shudder against him, let out a little moan. His fingers began working their way down Aziraphale’s buttons. 

“And you know,” Aziraphale continued. “You know what I’m like. Once I’ve tried something, oh--” he broke off; Crowley’s mouth had found a nipple. “Once I’ve tried something, and I like it, I’m afraid I’m not happy until I’ve had it all,” he finished breathily. 

“Mm,” Crowley rumbled against his skin, pulled his mouth away. “S’true, my angel. Never content with just a taste. Have to eat the whole banquet.” Crowley’s eyes met Aziraphale’s and the corner of his lip quirked up. Without him saying anything more, Aziraphale just knew they were remembering exactly the same outrageous feast in the 12th century they had both attended, nearly a thousand years ago now. How was it possible that Aziraphale had ever thought he could live without his dear demon? How was it possible that they had gone so many years without this, without their hands on each other, their lips on each other’s skin? 

“Oh, my dear,” Aziraphale said, laughing at the shared memory and overcome all at once. “Oh, my dear, I love you so much.” 

Crowley surged against him. “Say it again, please,” he mumbled against Aziraphale’s neck. 

“As many times as you like, dearest,” Aziraphale murmured into Crowley’s hair. “I love you; I love you.” 

“How do you want to--?” Crowley asked into his skin. “We don’t have to if you don’t want to. It could just be this. Just the kissing and the cuddling…”

“I want to,” Aziraphale said. “But only if you--” 

“Bless it, yes,” Crowley gasped. “Yes, for ages.”

“Should we--” 

“Yes”

And they found themselves, quite abruptly, upstairs on a dusty antique bed in a spare room that until recently had only been used for storing books. Aziraphale’s shirt was all the way open now. As Crowley’s hot mouth mapped out a path towards Aziraphale’s waistband, Aziraphale’s body realized abruptly it had yet to make an effort and rectified the situation. 

“Oh, fuck,” Aziraphale said with feeling, head falling back onto a copy of “Sense and Sensibility” that hadn’t managed to get off the bed in time. He was instantly hot and hard and straining against the front of his trousers. All of the diffuse sense of love and longing that had brought them to this point were suddenly concentrated in one particular area. 

“Is this kind of effort?--” Aziraphale asked. 

“Perfect, it’s perfect,” Crowley said. He opened Aziraphale's trousers, wrapped one hot hand around what was inside. Aziraphale couldn’t hold back his moan. 

“Fuck,” Crowley said thickly. “Fuck, Aziraphale, I wanted...I wanted to take my time. But I need. I need you to be inside--”

“Yes, love,” Aziraphale gasped, needing it too, so much that without any conscious miracle on his part, they were suddenly both very naked. 

“Yessss,” Crowley hissed, straddling him. Crowley had manifested something between his legs that might not have been quite in line with human concepts of anatomy but was slick and wet and so very hot. Aziraphale slid inside in one smooth motion with a grateful sigh. Above him, Crowley let out a little “oh” of pleasure and rocked down against him, hard. 

Aziraphale pushed his hips up, pushed himself into Crowley’s body once and again. 

“Deeper,” Crowley hissed, grinding down on him, “Deeper, Aziraphale please, please.” 

“I’m all the way inside already,” Aziraphale gasped out, his hips pressed flush against Crowley’s. 

“You’re not,” Crowley whispered, shuddering against him. “You haven’t even started, not in the way I mean. Like thissss.” 

And the next time Aziraphale thrust in, he felt something dark and irresistible pulling him further, inside and up towards where Crowley’s heart would be if he had one. Aziraphale was powerless to stop it, as if an ocean were in his blood and all his soul was surging up and into Crowley’s like a rising tide. It was overwhelming, both too much and not enough. Aziraphale lost track of what his human body was doing, overcome by the sensation of his soul wrapped around, within Crowley’s. Dimly, Aziraphale was aware of his own wings, flapping ineffectually in the mortal plain, knocking books off the shelves, Crowley’s dark and beautiful wings above him like a canopy, snippets of vision from a thousand different eyes, wetness on his face. He was crying. Crowley was crying too, he realized with a jolt, tears dripping down onto Aziraphale’s bare chest where they sizzled and stung just a bit with the heat of hell. At the shock of this, the sight of Crowley’s tears, Aziraphale struggled against the sensations and the tide receded. It hurt, more than he expected, to gather himself back into his paltry human corporation, to separate from Crowley. Then he was back to his own body again, still thrumming with some unseen tension, and Crowley was peering down at him with glassy serpentine eyes. 

“Wh’d you stop?” Crowley mumbled. 

“My dear,” Aziraphale reached a hand up, wiped at the tears that clung to Crowley’s cheeks. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah,” Crowley said, dazedly. “More than.” 

“It’s not too much?” Aziraphale asked. “It feels like…” he hesitated, unsure if saying this out loud would make it real, would hurt his dear, precious demon. “It feels like a benediction Crowley, are you sure it’s safe?” 

Crowley grinned down at him. “A benediction? Does this feel holy to you?” Something rippled and rearranged between them, and Crowley was suddenly thrusting into him, hard and hot and possessive, catching Aziraphale somewhere between too much and not enough. 

“Fuck, Crowley,” Aziraphale gasped. “It does though, it does feel holy...doesn’t it?”

“Feels like a consummation,” Crowley growled, and the truth of those words spread through Aziraphale, warmed him, pushed him closer to the inevitable edge. “It’s not holy, it’s not about above or below. Aziraphale, it’s about us. It’s just about us.” 

“Show me,” Aziraphale gasped, leaning up to kiss him. “Show me, show me.” 

Crowley thrust in again, hard, and this time something else came with it, a frission of temptation, the long line of Crowley’s throat as he swallowed his first oyster back in Rome, the sharp scent of smoke, the metallic taste of a freshly created galaxy, the cool patter of rain on a wing stretched out above him. A desert blooming for the first time. 

Aziraphale gasped and pulled back. “Oh,” he whispered into Crowley’s hair. 

“Yeah, angel, yeah” Crowley said back, pressing their foreheads together. 

“Never knew it could be like this.” Aziraphale said softly, feeling full to bursting with all this feeling, sensation, love. 

“Me either,” Crowley whispered back. “Me either angel.” 

They dove back into one another. Aziraphale did not know or care how long it lasted. It was so similar, and yet so different, from all the ways they had had one another as humans. It felt a little bit holy and perhaps a little bit damning and definitely ineffable. When the feelings inevitably rose up and crested over, Aziraphale felt as though his whole corporation was glowing, shaking apart, coming out of its skin. Crowley was still inside him, all around him, iridescent scales appearing and disappearing on his physical form. 

“Angel, angel,” Crowley whispered, sounding just as wrecked as Aziraphale felt. Or perhaps he did not whisper, perhaps he said it straight into Aziraphale’s mind. 

“Crowley, you’re wonderful,” Aziraphale whispered back the same way. “You’re perfect, it’s alright love, you can, you can let go, I’ve got you.” 

Crowley gasped and sank his fangs into Aziraphale’s shoulder, shaking apart as Aziraphale held him and held him and held him. 

***

Much later, Aziraphale awoke after having slept again for only the second time in his divine existence. Highly unusual, but then again, it had been an unusual twenty four hours. Aziraphale felt wrung out, pleasantly sore in all the corporeal ways, and also sore somewhere deep in his soul, a sweet ache that came, he thought, from being so thoroughly seen. 

He sat up. Crowley was not in the bed with him, but he was somewhere in the shop. Aziraphale could feel him, a dear blot of darkness, puttering around somewhere downstairs. Aziraphale stumbled into his slippers, manifested a dressing gown only to have it catch on his wings, which were still out. He waved them away absently, then wandered down the stairs.

Crowley was in the small kitchen next to the back room, miracling up a cup of the strong black coffee he favored, and the sweet English tea Aziraphale liked. There were pastries on the counter, the French madeleines that were Aziraphale’s favorite, arranged on some kind of tray. Azirahphale’s heart clenched in his chest to see him there, familiar and solid, outlined by the warm morning light from the window over the sink, in nothing but black boxers, with bare scaly feet and sunglasses forgotten somewhere in St James Park. Crowley’s wings fluttered behind him, not quite here, but not quite somewhere else either, still visible in a faint outline where the dust motes in the air refused to hang.

Crowley turned to him, and a true smile broke out over his face. “Angel,” he said, holding up the mugs. “Was just gonna bring this to you. Apparently, breakfast in bed is just the—”

Aziraphale crossed the room in two strides and took advantage of the fact that Crowley’s hands were otherwise occupied to grasp his face tenderly between his palms and kiss him senseless. 

Later, perhaps, they would go out for a picnic, or dine at the Ritz again. Surely, they would make love again this afternoon, maybe even this morning. It could be slow and gentle, with a little taste of heaven. Or perhaps it would be fast and fierce, tinged with the lust of hell. Or he would hold Crowley down in order to tell him how lovely he was, like they had once as humans in the desert. A thousand possibilities spiraled out ahead of them, a thousand mornings like this one, breakfasting together. A thousand nights with Crowley sprawled out in front of the fireplace, good port swirling in their glasses. It would not be any different from before. It would be entirely different from before.

Aziraphale pulled back, met the open gaze of Crowley’s yellow eyes. They were beautiful in the early morning light. They were always beautiful, had been beautiful for thousands of years, if only he had allowed himself to look.

“You know,” Aziraphale said, “All the times I told you I loved you in these past six thousand human lives, I never thought about what comes next.”

Crowley set the mugs down on the counter gently, took Aziraphale’s hands in his own. “I thought about telling you I loved you for six thousand years, angel. I never thought about what comes next either.”

“Well,” Aziraphale said, squeezing Crowley’s dear, elegant hands. “I suppose we’ll find out together.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, that’s the end! This fic is technically done, but there is a bit of a possibility of an epilogue. Maybe someday, no promises! That said, I more than welcome anyone who wants to take parts and run with it (with proper credit of course). Podfic, art, translation, further human AUs set in this universe, etc. All are fine by me!
> 
> Y’all, it has been such a wild ride writing this story. I had so much fun with it, and really treasured your comments, feedback, etc. Please do feel free to reach out here or on Tumblr to discuss. It has been so fun to keep the updates coming, and I’m so honored people enjoyed this story! This was my first long story EVER and it was such a positive experience, mostly thanks to how wonderful and kind everyone in this fandom has been.
> 
> If you liked it, please share with others! There’s so much great Good Omens fic out there, I’m a bit afraid this one might get lost in the shuffle once it is no longer updating regularly.

**Author's Note:**

> Quote at the beginning is from Mary Oliver's excellent poem "Not Anyone Who Says" 
> 
> Title is from Hamlet: "Doubt thou the stars are fire/ doubt that the sun doth move / doubt truth to be a liar /but never doubt I love"
> 
> I'm trying to make fandom friends,[come say hi](https://princip1914.tumblr.com) on tumblr! I love and cherish each and every comment here too.


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